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THE TREE 
OF THE GARDEN 


THE NOVELS OF 
E. C. BOOTH 


THE TREE OF THE GARDEN 
FONDIE 
BELLA 

THE DOCTOR’S LASS 
THE POST GIRL 


T-252 




THE TREE 
OF THE GARDEN 


BY 

EDWARD C. BOOTH ' 

w 

AUTHOR OF “FONDIE,” ETC. 



“And ye shall be as gods, 
Knowing good and evil? 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK : : : : MCMXXIII 


COPYRIGHT, I923, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

©C1AG3G291 _ g ,22 Y'?v1 N ’ 


TO 

MY BROTHERS 

GEORGE AND BROMLEY 

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 








THE TREE OF THE GARDEN 


i 


I 


W RAPPED in her unaccustomed garments of bereave- 
ment, the widow of John Openshaw stood one morn¬ 
ing before his massive roll-top desk in the comfort¬ 
able smoke-room, misnamed a study, that had been consecrate 
to him in life, holding in her reluctant fingers the key which— 
to the shrinking susceptibilities of such recent sorrow—felt as if 
it had been purloined from the dead. For her the act assumed 
the semblance of a profanation. This steel cold key, this 
swelling secretaire—to which death had all at once imparted the 
solemn contours of a tomb—had been sacred to her husband 
hitherto. He alone had used them. Her confidence in him was 
so implicit, sustained by such allegiant belief of his confidence 
in her, that she shirked disclosure of the least secret, however 
trifling, which his wisdom or consideration had kept unrevealed. 
Yet the moment, be it now or later, was inevitable when his 
widow’s hands must sift the dead man’s papers and wound her 
grief afresh with many a remembrance of the life so loved and 
tragically taken. For a whole week she had deferred the task, 
gazing at the secretaire with streaming eyes that saw, through 
their tears, the blurred vision of the dead man seated still in the 
revolving chair before the deep mahogany, and shrinking from 
the obligation imposed on her with a tortured: “I cannot. . . . 
I cannot. It seems too terrible. I can scarcely think him dead.” 
But the duty could, with decency, no longer be delayed. Thrice 
had Mrs. Lattimer, who was the wife of her dead husband's 

closest friend, inquired if this necessary task were done. The 

1 


2 


The Tree of the Garden 

query had elicited, each time, only tears of impotent negation. 
“Goodness me!” her friend declared. “Not yet. Surely you 
ought to. It is high time. T. here may be papers—letters . . . 
things to deal with. He has been dead nearly a fortnight.” 

She added: “I couldn’t have rested all this while as you’ve 
done, if it had been my husband. One never knows . . . what 
you may find.” 

“Never knows?” Mrs. Openshaw had echoed with expos- 
tulatory tears. The saying of Mrs. Lattimer, to her faith, 
seemed infidel and sceptic. “We had no secrets from each 
other. My husband told me everything.” 

With an air of resignation bordering on impatience, as if she 
realised that the soil of sorrow had been plowed too deep and 
harrowed yet too lightly to be ready for the seed of counsel, 
Mrs. Lattimer explained: “I mean . . . business matters. 
Private matters. Any sort of matters. Goodness me! If my 
husband were to die I should want to know all. There might 
be things to burn. Things one wouldn’t like anybody to see. 
You know what men are.” 

“I may not know what men are,” Mrs. Openshaw protested, 
her grief in arms at once, “ . . . but I know what my dear 
husband was. Rather than believe myself actuated by any curi¬ 
osity unworthy of the perfect faith we had in one another, I 
would fling the key away from me and leave his desk locked for¬ 
ever. There may be things in it—as you say—of dearest im¬ 
portance to him, whose value I may fail to appreciate. Old 
letters from dead friends, old remembrances of his youth . . . 
keepsakes . . . trifles. O! don’t you understand the terrible 
responsibility at a time like this ... of disturbing things that 
may have meant so much to him, and may mean so cruelly, tragi¬ 
cally little to me?” 

So for a week her sentiment had wrestled with reality. Then 
one morning, with a soul prepared by prayer, she let herself into 
the dead man’s writing chamber, bowed her head over the place 
where so often her husband’s head had been, and unlocked the 
secretaire at last. 


The Tree of the Garden 


3 


2 

As the shutter rolled solemnly upward her tears flowed fast, 
stung by the sight of all these intimate things disclosed. There 
were the pens he once had used; his blotting pad, made hiero¬ 
glyphic with reversed impressions of his big bold signature; his 
seal, his sticks of wax, his stamp-moistener, his paper-knife, 
ruler, letter-weight, ash-tray, cigar-cutter. These things, 
through long association with the dead man, seemed to have 
absorbed a part of his identity, that issued in an overwhelming 
current at the first supplicative glance of sorrow. He was in¬ 
stinct in each familiar object looked at—in each one touched. 
Again and again, with susceptibilities incredibly quickened by 
their aid, she heard the sepulchral rolling of that awful vehicle 
that brought him home. She heard the grinding of the gravel 
as the strange wheels bit into it. She saw the inert mass of flesh 
and blood drawn forth with dreadful labor from the creaking 
cab; the helpless limbs, the drawn and altered face of the big- 
built six-foot figure of a man who had taken robust leave of her 
that morning and gone to his business in Hunmouth with the 
firm tread of one who seemed as if he owed no debts at all to 
Time. The stricken supplication in his eyes, where now alone 
life seemed to linger—clinging desperately to looks as if the 
power of sight could save him—haunted her incessantly. Those 
eyes . . . fixed on hers to the last—imploring, hungering, striv¬ 
ing to wrest the drawn lips’ function and to speak as with a 
tongue! Those eyes . . . those eyes! Not her own two hands 
—not all the hands in Christendom—could blot this vision 
from her. 

She did not seat herself in the dead man’s swivel chair, on 
which in the past he had so often swung to greet her. She drew 
up another chair by the side of it, to sustain the pious illusion of 
his presence near her, and began the task long shirked, as if 
beneath her husband’s eye and with his sanction. No more 
scrupulous and sympathetic gaze ever dwelt on relics of the 
dead. 


4 


The Tree of the Garden 

Wrapped up in emotional remembrance, in that thick soft 
mantle of a sorrow embroidered with the unbearable splendour 
of a life for ever ended and made one with God, the work of 
eyes and fingers grew almost automatic. From out of this 
cataleptic state of service she awoke, all suddenly, through suc¬ 
cessive stages of bewilderment and consternation to a marble 
fixity of horror. She held a letter in her trembling hand; her 
gaze wandered unceasingly from the single Christian name 
with which it was subscribed to the uneven lines traced by 
some imperfect pen, and strove without avail to put alike this 
wretched script and her struggling apprehensions away from 
her. But she could not. Horror supplanted grief; consterna¬ 
tion prevailed over sorrow. She could only gaze and bite her 
twisted lip, and cry: “O, no! O, no, no, no! It could not . . . 
it cannot be!” 

Other letters there were, in the same unpractised hand, con¬ 
fessing the same disruptive Christian name—behind whose im¬ 
penetrable identity the basest terrors mocked her faith. One 
or two of the envelopes were stamped; the rest had been deliv¬ 
ered by hand to her dead husband’s place of business in Hun- 
mouth. The most recent of them bore the address of the 
writer embossed in blue upon its page. 

“One never knows . . .” The words of her friend, that 
had so shocked her in the utterance with a sense of infidelity 
towards the dead, recoiled upon her now with a new and ter¬ 
rible significance. She dropped the sheet at last with a cry 
of remonstrant grief as if her sorrow repudiated intercourse 
with anything so sacrilegious and vile. 


3 

Married later in life than the generality of mothers, Mrs. 
Openshaw had taken marriage and maternity more seriously 
than younger wives. For her, the orange blossom and the 
nun’s veil had a quality in common. Each implied a solemn 
dedication. Kneeling to Hymen in life’s sober latter ’thirties, 


s 


The Tree of the Garden 

she took her matrimony with meekness and fervour, as she would 
have tasted of the Cup—exalted and stirred, triumphant and 
humble. She had tasted childbirth long after her generation, 
coming to the banquet when others of her acquaintance had 
quitted the table, at an age when the formality of the feast 
has more terrors for its participants, and more dangers. 

The tragedy of her husband's death, after a few brief years 
of union, and the dreadful realities disclosed by it, shook the 
foundations of her soul. Such vivid lightning of disillusion¬ 
ment, flashing on spiritual eyesight altogether unprepared, 
might (she felt) have blinded her for ever to the sweetness 
and purity of life, and left her visionless and sceptic. Either 
(so the stricken faith within her whispered) must she surrender 
to the base realities surrounding her, and readjust her vision to 
this lower standard, or resolutely must she trample every sceptic 
feeling underfoot, and lift her faith above all rude experiences 
that would coarsen it and drag it down. For her son’s sake 
she chose the latter course. At all cost life’s dreadful realism 
must be secreted from him. He must never know of this other 
woman—never suspect. Out of the wreckage of his father’s 
virtues her love created a new, immaculate John Openshaw—a 
very best of husbands and of fathers, whose life had been one 
noble dedication to wife and son. 

Just as the monumental mason chisels deceased virtues in 
cold marble, so Mrs. Openshaw strove to trace in the softer 
substance of her son’s character an abiding memorial to the 
goodness of her dead husband and their boy’s devoted father. 
In such an atmosphere of pious seclusion, where life appeared 
a sort of emblematic dedication to the dead, and motives were 
fed from mystic rather than rational sources, it was easy for 
fears to take on the likeness of follies, and for love to develop 
a quality more enervating than protective. Her heart was 
ever in armour for her son. The keenness of her care for him 
partook more of the nature of an inverted terror; her love was 
heart’s gold embroidered on black velvet, its gleaming thread 
alone relieving the darkness of what it worked on. To her 


6 


The Tree of the Garden 

imagination ever her son’s cradle-cloth had borne the semblance 
of a shroud. Did he cough, straightway a tomb yawned; was 
he listless or too active, her apprehensions opened to the full 
like doors and windows, each one giving on Eternity. Not 
knowing which dread malady to fear, she made provision by 
fearing all. Doubtful of her own guardianship, there was yet 
none she trusted better. She dared to ask no counsel of her 
friends, through fear of being constrained to act upon it. The 
doctor laughed her cares to scorn. She answered: “You are 
not his mother.” 


4 

Thus, when other gentlemen of Master Openshaw’s age 
were preparing themselves for the battle of life, using their 
feet and fists at school, and laying the foundation stones of a 
vocabulary, Master Openshaw absorbed a gentle wisdom with 
the chill off, standing in the sheltered hollow of his mother’s 
arm; going lady-like walks by her side for his health’s sake, 
with an instant change of stockings on return, after the least 
passage over suspected grass, and a spoonful of some flesh¬ 
forming syrup after meals. 

Not, to be sure, that his mother’s love entailed any neglect 
of the boy’s education. Far otherwise. In point of learning 
he was probably the equal of any boy of his own age whose 
knuckles had ever drawn blood. He could play Dussek’s “Con¬ 
solation” on the piano, and studies by Stephen Heller, with 
almost his mother’s touch. Three times a week the weather¬ 
worn Mdlle. Teniers came out from Hunmouth (faithful to 
her distended umbrella, wet or fine) to teach him a finely 
filtered French—passed through the closest meshwork of 
maternal selection. Each Wednesday and Saturday he took 
tablespoonfuls of Greek and Latin from an undermaster at the 
Grammar School, while his mother sewed and listened, rising 
at the first apprehension of lassitude on her son’s part to ter¬ 
minate the lesson with a gracious “Thank you, thank you, Mr. 


The Tree of the Garden 7 

Gumble. I think we will let that suffice for to-day. My son 
had rather a restless night.” 

For a brief while, indeed, Mrs. Openshaw provided her son 
with a tutor; but the latter smoked heavily in his room so that 
the smell of tobacco creeping through his keyhole clung per¬ 
petually about the staircase, and did sacrilege to the memory 
of her husband’s sanctified cigars. Moreover, one of the maids 
(the youngest) was noticed to be indefatigable in her attentions 
to his landing. A zeal for the dusting of it positively possessed 
her. Nothing definite was proved between the two—except, 
perhaps, a commendable discretion on the part of both—but 
the thing tainted the air for Mrs. Openshaw, like the tutor's 
tobacco, recalling old associations and disinterring dreadful 
memories. She had the fear it might infect her son—impreg¬ 
nate his tender mind, as the blow-fly strikes the flesh of her 
unsuspecting victims, to bring forth later the seething progeny 
of corruption. 

He was yet too young to be instructed by one of his own 
sex. In an incautious moment the smoking tutor might be 
led to tread some path of confidence outstepping the boundary 
of her son’s years. The nebulous episode of the housemaid 
formed the apex to her fears. She decided that her son’s spir¬ 
itual welfare must come before his material education. The 
tutor, suitably imbursed, took leave, and for the first time in 
some weeks the undermaid might be met upon the staircase 
without a heightened colour. 


5 

Some time later, when a respectable sufficiency of months 
had been allowed to pass over the tutor’s memory, Mrs. Open¬ 
shaw—tormented by any thoughts for her son’s educational 
welfare short of sending him to school—began to consider 
the question of a resident governess. Her thought took shape; 
the governess came, and the sight of three formidable boxes 
on the cab-roof, and the odour of alien occupation that filled the 
hall with their owner’s arrival, caused Mrs. Openshaw’s heart 


8 


The Tree of the Garden 

to sink. Over a cup of afternoon tea the two women tried 
their best to thaw, and a man would have said they succeeded; 
but their smiles were sword-play, and beneath the governess’s 
deferential ripostes Mrs. Openshaw encountered a wrist of 
steel. Miss Hesper knew herself distrusted; Mrs. Openshaw 
felt herself despised. Each sought to win her adversary by the 
very qualities that formed the reason of their feud. The gov¬ 
erness had spent her life in educating the progeny of the well- 
to-do. She had presided over nurseries of the nobility, and been 
pinched by juvenile members of the peerage; had sipped infre¬ 
quent tea in the presence of prelates and politicians, and once 
been shawled by a Cabinet Minister. That she had bitten her 
lips with a hundred mortifications during these periods of 
glorified servitude mattered little the moment she had left it. 
The snubs of her employers were small coin, it is true, but in 
their aggregate they formed her life’s savings of distinction. 
She had long ceased to correspond with her early friends, and 
held her family only as a last and dreadful resource when all 
the nobility had failed. Her very deference was like ice, a 
frozen slab for the preservation of her self-respect. When she 
bowed to Mrs. Openshaw’s commands her frigid compliance 
—like a twinge of toothache endured unwincing—was more 
than half a rebuke. She moved through the house as brittle 
as an icicle, and made the air about her chill. For what honour 
was Mrs. Openshaw capable of conferring on one who had 
been personally slighted by the aristocracy? 

The pretensions of these two aspirants came to battle over 
the boy; they contended for his sympathy between themselves 
as selfish bedfellows struggle over a coverlet not broad enough 
for both. Miss Hesper, probably foreseeing her tenure brief, 
took malicious pleasure in appropriating the boy’s affection— 
a commodity not hard to win—as the surest way to wound her 
adversary. She prompted him to fetch and place her footstool, 
to rise in advance of her and open doors, with sundry other 
exercises of devotion that caused his mother exquisite pain. 
These offices, she had the jealousy to think, ought to be kept 


9 


The Tree of the Garden 

sacred to herself alone. It made her writhe to see the tender 
pages of his heart turned with such authoritative freedom by 
this presumptuous hand. 

“I do not encourage my son to lift heavy articles,” she 
plucked up strength to tell Miss Hesper, after a demonstration 
with the governess’s hassock, bitterly witnessed. The gov¬ 
erness coloured. “The footstool—if you refer to that, Mrs. 
Openshaw”—she said—“is scarcely likely to do Guy harm. It 
is only right he should be taught his manners.” 

“I was not aware that my son’s manners needed any teach¬ 
ing,” Mrs. Openshaw remarked, with a reflection of Miss 
Hesper’s colour. “If so, I am afraid the fault is mine, for, such 
as they are, he has learned them from me.” 

And then she gives the boy a holiday as a means of dis¬ 
possessing Miss Hesper of her ill-gotten influence for the rest 
of the day, and he and she go for a drive together, and Miss 
Hesper’s cold in the head becomes acute, so that she asks with 
fitting dignity if her employer will wish her to recontinue 
lessons in the morning. The feud goes on; jealousies are sharp¬ 
ened ; words and motives become plainer. Mrs. Openshaw 
suspects the governess of tampering with the lock of her son’s 
affection, for the lock seems not always responsive to the deli¬ 
cate maternal key. She doubts Miss Hesper’s influence over 
Guy. Miss Hesper retaliates with a denunciation of Mrs. 
Openshaw’s behaviour. “You are ruining” (she avers) 
“your son.” 

“In view of such an opinion of me,” says Mrs. Openshaw, 
“you will realise that I cannot possibly allow you to continue 
the education of my son after this term.” 

“Continue!” cries Miss Hesper. “You have not even per¬ 
mitted me to begin, Mrs. Openshaw. From the very first you 
have systematically undermined my authority and obstructed 
my teaching. I hope sincerely for your son’s sake you may not 
live to regret it. In my wide experience I have known so 
many bright and lovable dispositions ruined by the injudicious¬ 
ness of parents.” 


io The Tree of the Garden 

She hoped, too, perhaps, that Mrs. Openshaw might relent. 
And Mrs. Openshaw, secretly horrified at this second disaster 
to the education of her son, and suspecting grave faults within 
herself, injurious to his welfare, truth to tell, awaited but a 
sign. But beyond these respective limits of their attitudes they 
did not, for all the emotion that sometimes filled them, move. 
The cab rolled inexorably away beneath its super-imposed 
boxes, disclosing Miss Hesper attached to a convulsed hand¬ 
kerchief by means of her nose and both hands. Mrs. Open¬ 
shaw wept too—tears of remorse they seemed to her to be, 
struggling to expiate a crime. Guy was also among the weep¬ 
ers, and his mother’s first act when the cab had disappeared 
was to fold him in her arms and kiss him—partly for his com¬ 
fort, more for hers, but chiefly (as she was aware) to take 
possession of his sorrow and redirect it softly to her own 
necessities. He, at least (thank God), was spared to her. He, 
at least, was permanent and true. 

But though Mrs. Openshaw might be thus rid of her sus¬ 
pected rival, she could not dismiss responsibility in a cab. Miss 
Hesper’s words of admonition took root and put forth leaf. 
Could it be actually true (her mother’s heart demanded) that 
she was ruining her son? 


6 

Doubtless the boy was delicate; her prodigality of love not 
altogether wasted. From the dead man he inherited little to 
the eye. The breadth of shoulder and majesty of build that 
had made the late John Openshaw conspicuous among his fel¬ 
lows was absent from the son, whose characters were written 
in minuscule after the maternal model. And doubtless some 
hint of adolescent change was manifest in the boy’s occasional 
languors that cost his mother such alarms. His system was but 
deepening and strengthening those invisible foundations on 
which maturity must build. So indeed the doctor thought. 
There was nothing in the world the matter with her son—he 


II 


The Tree of the Garden 

told Mrs. Openshaw—except his bringing up. The young 
bird must be fledged; the risk inevitable must be run—unless 
the parent bird would have its offspring die upon the nest. 
Youth demanded physical emancipation, and he summed up 
Mrs. Openshaw’s maternal policy in the drastic word: “Molly¬ 
coddle!” 

“Let your son go out to grass a while,” said he, “and 
give him liberty to fatten and develop after his own fashion. 
His instincts will find a better road to health than all your 
fears can show him. Send him to some farmhouse near the 
sea, where he can have plenty of good food and fresh air and 
bodily exercise. Above all, don’t go with him. In a month 
he’ll be a man.” 

He spoke as a friend of long standing as well as a practitioner 
whose patience much maternal anxiety had somewhat tried, and 
his words struck home. Miss Hesper appeared all at once to 
the listener’s conscience as a vision bathed in awful light, coifed 
with a halo, her mouth so pursed and ominous that it seemed 
to be in frills. The tutor floated by, a pallid spectre, his flesh 
not more substantial than tobacco-smoke, gazing reproachfully 
at her with a ghostly, staircase eye. 

She said to herself: “I see it. I see it. It is for his good. 
I must suffer it and spare him. Sooner or later he must be 
taught to dispense with his mother’s love and care. That is 
the tragedy of every mother’s heart. The day comes when 
we are no longer necessary to our children.” 

In a moment of courage she wrote to Whinsett. The farm 
had been her late dear husband’s property—as it would some 
day be, please God, her son’s—and she knew it lay by the 
coast, for she had heard her husband speak with breezy uncon¬ 
cern of the sea that robbed him annually of his agricultural 
acres, yard by yard. She thought the tenants might be willing 
to receive their late landlord’s son, on suitable terms, and ven¬ 
tured the proposal. Their reply came at length in the affirma¬ 
tive, and for a whole day she hid it. After that day’s respite 


12 


The Tree of the Garden 

she broke the news to her own hearing through the medium of 
her friend, Mrs. Lattimer. 

“I have decided to send Guy to Whinsett for a few weeks,” 
she said; but it was clear to herself and to her listener that 
this vaunted decision was purely tentative. Her friend’s reply, 
that followed without hesitation, held no comfort for her. 

“You never did a wiser thing,” Mrs. Lattimer declared. 
“It’s high time something was done with the boy.” 


II 


I 

V ISITORS of consequence are expected at Whinsett. 
More than six years have passed since the landlord of 
Suddaby’s farm died of a seizure in Hunmouth. The 
Plumpton publican remembers the property when it was for 
sale, close on twenty years ago, and recalls having seen John 
Openshaw drive by on his first visit of inspection, along with 
the old Beatonthorpe lawyer, White Lattimer—two big men 
sitting shoulder to shoulder in Abram Blockley’s chaise. To¬ 
day John Openshaw’s widow is to bring her only son to Whin- 
sett for his health’s sake. Rumour says he has had his chest 
sounded by two different doctors, one of whom shook his head, 
and is to have an egg beaten up in milk, and sweetened, every 
forenoon without fail. Mrs. Openshaw is coming in person 
on purpose to explain to Mrs. Suddaby the proper care of 
him—the mother of a family of seven, all living, being much 
less versed in the requirements of youth than the mother of a 
unit. It is known that a two-sheet letter of instructions came 
through the post this morning, of which Helen Suddaby had 
read as far as the third page when the postman took his leave; 
and there are those who assert already that the seat of the 
lad’s ailment is not so much in his. chest as in his mother. 

At any time after three o’clock the visitors may be expected, 
for the Hunmouth train is due in Dimmlesea at twenty min¬ 
utes to the hour. Mrs. Openshaw, though the bearer of a well 
known name, has never been seen in this portion of the world 
before, and the district is prepared. There are outposts along 
the road as far as Plumpton, where the joiner’s wife sits sewing 
by her open door, threading her needle when necessary in the 
Dimmlesea direction. Mrs. Bulson, in a black cap and a gray 
plaid shawl, who celebrated her eightieth birthday the week 

13 


14 


The Tree of the Garden 

before last, and despite bronchitis and a beard is still a woman, 
has been propped up by the next-door neighbors to replace the 
looking-glass in the front bedroom, with her brow impressing 
its furrows from time to time against the pane. Her interest 
is as keen as any, albeit her memory plays tricks with her. 
The Plumpton blacksmith—who is a man of iron and one 
of Mrs. Openshaw’s pre-judges (saying he would soon make 
a man of her son if he had the handling of him)—is under 
promise to shout to his wife from the smithy as soon as he 
hears the rumble of Blockley’s chaise. He is a gaunt strong 
man of wisdom and experience, who exudes axle-grease from 
his pores in lieu of perspiration, and can never offer a hand 
on week-days but he must first wipe it clean across his brow. 
He knows the click of every shoe upon the road, and whose 
forge it comes from, and will detect strange shoeings a mile 
away in calm weather. 

A while later he lifts up his head and cries: 

“Thoo can be coming to yard-end any time, noo, missus”— 
and proceeds to blow up the forge with deific unconcern, as if 
the doings of mortals and the trumpery interests of the inferior 
world disturbed him not at all. But he comes to the smithy- 
door for all that when the chaise goes by, cooling a piece of 
cherry-red iron in his long pincers, as if for no other purpose 
than to rebuke the folly of his wife. 

His wife, fortified with thirty years’ experience of her hus¬ 
band’s character, pays no heed to his reproaches, but remarks 
amiably: “She seems an oldish woman, by looks of her, 
Adam.” 

“Oldish woman? Aye!” retorts the blacksmith with such 
fine dismissiveness that to all intents and purposes he appears 
to be done with this topic and back at his forge. 

“Lad looks delicate,” his wife reflects serenely, coming to the 
smithy door. She is a placid amiable soul of innumerable vir¬ 
tues, as the blacksmith is aware; deeply and ingenuously in¬ 
terested in the doings of her fellows, and for ever perusing the 
pages of the outer world through bespectacled eyes of bland 


The Tree of the Garden 15 

and rapt absorption, as if it were a novelette; fresh of skin, 
friendly of countenance, and corporeally solid. 

“Delicate!” Her husband derides the adjective, heaping 
cinders of contumely over it with his forge rake and blowing 
it to white heat of intoleration, as if the fire were his own 
anger. “Syke lads stands need to be delicate,” he says. “They 
get ower mich mothering at home. I’ll awander yon fellow’s 
lapped up i’ his mother’s flannel petticoat most part of his 
time. Nobbut I had hod of him for a week or two he wouldn’t 
be delicate. Aye! that’s it, missus! Stand fair i’ doorway 
and take all light there is. I mud be sure thoo would.” 

In such wise the Plumpton blacksmith is willing to converse 
with all who will parley with him (as his wife knows well), 
for though a hard man by profession and outward seeming, 
and a contemner of the indolences, he is at heart a great human 
and a born lover of the sound of tongues. By flouting truth 
to her face and expressing scorn of speech in public he ac¬ 
quires a knowledge of the world’s motion as deep as that of the 
most egregious babblers—whom he will take good care to milk 
dry of all their communicable gossip before dismissing them 
with obloquy. In Plumpton and the district round he passes 
for a “strange droll fellow,” and there are still those who 
believe he is a hater of the amenities; but these are not of the 
elect. Nor are they who hold that the blacksmith will go to 
heaven when his time comes, holding the hammer in one hand 
and the tongs in the other—a saying figurative of his indus¬ 
try. It is true his hands are black till bedtime, and are even 
reputed to have been seen going up the narrow stairway after 
supper, where history loses sight of them. Generations of grim 
smith-lore lurk in those terrible finger-ends, and he practises 
the traditional waggeries of his trade with the grimness of an 
Elijah: drops bars of excruciating iron on obtruding toes, blows 
burning embers and showers of fiery metal over the incautious, 
rasps knuckles with the horse-file, and tenders to the unwary 
hot shoes to hold that have no appreciable action on his callous 
hands, deriding the droppers of them with wrath. 


16 The Tree of the Garden 

All masculine Plumpton is taken in due course to Adam 
Rodwell’s forge to receive its baptism of fire; to be measured 
under the great wooden arms of the bellows that drops with a 
resounding crack on unsuspecting skulls; or to enter its novi¬ 
tiate through some other painful graduation. Hard by the 
anvil, engrossed in the intricacies of his craft, the blacksmith 
seems to have no consciousness of the circle of human satellites 
whose faces light up like harvest moons under the radiance of 
the forge. 

We have paused a while at the blacksmith’s because here¬ 
abouts he is a man to know, and in this uncertain world fate 
does not always bring us by the same door twice. Moreover, 
Abram Blockley’s chaise has still two miles of roadway to 
traverse. 


2 

Abram does not drive to-day. But he has twice raised his 
hat to Mrs. Openshaw at the Dimmlesea station, and carefully 
passed his knobbed fingers over all the straps and buckles of the 
horse’s trappings, and assured Mrs. Openshaw she may dis¬ 
pense with fear. She is driving (he tells her in a gust of con¬ 
fidence) behind the quietest mare in his stables; that is to say, 
the only one available. And she is being driven by the most 
steady and reliable of all his lads—which means the younger 
and lesser of the two—the older and bigger being away with 
a wagonette party at Merensea. He is a frail and insub¬ 
stantial youth of the height of six pennyworth of coppers, who 
has read his fare’s distrust of him in her dubious regard of his 
stature, and lays himself out to vindicate experience by reck¬ 
less proofs of intimacy with the equine species; cries “Hod 
up!” in a manufactured voice three times the size of himself; 
slaps the mare behind her flinching knees and picks up her fore¬ 
leg with the nonchalance for a ham-bone; passes to and fro 
beneath her stomach, and never goes by her muzzle but that he 
butts it with his head. On the box he is diminished almost 
to invisibility by conjunction with the convex-lidded trunk; sit- 


i7 


The Tree of the Garden 

ting sideways, after the adult model, the better to hear what 
his fares are saying, and to impart information when required, 
screwing intercalary “kts” out of alternate corners of his 
mouth—an act that causes his ears to wag and brings the 
pucker in his lips on either side within an inch of them. Mrs. 
Openshaw is privately concerned with the contraction of his 
shoulders, being distressed to note how their driver stoops over 
his narrow chest in a posture that causes all the boy’s incon¬ 
sequential vertebrae and his breeches buttons to protrude 
through his jacket. She decides that driving must be a per¬ 
nicious exercise for youth, and ever drawing lessons for her 
son from all she sees, bids the latter anxiously, “Sit up, dear.” 

It was an afternoon in mid June, warm and humid. The 
corn was in milk, and all the air seemed softened with balmy 
fragrance of fattening grain. Everywhere one felt the sense 
of flowing sap that freshens and subdues the face of nature 
like the blood behind a girl’s cheek. Now and again the flesh- 
warm fragrance that floated from ripening pith and juicy stalk 
rose up in a sudden access of sweetness to the ravishing breath 
of honeyed clover, that supreme, ineffable sweetness as though 
perfume were on the poignant borderline of the sense allotted 
to her, and must next moment burst through every limitation 
into the empire of the other senses and become sweet sound and 
swooning sight, tremulous music and a passionate white body. 
Last night’s rain had cleansed the corn and washed away the 
dust from the drowsy hedgerows. Thunder threatened, not 
ominously, but with the distant hint of majesty that lent a 
grandeur to the brow of day and gave it a deeper, stronger 
character than that conferred by cloudless skies alone. Mut- 
terings troubled the west as though gods communed. The sun 
still struggled with masses of rebellious clouds piled up against 
the sky in mighty contours of purple, blackening the waters of 
the Hun. All along the roadway as the chaise moved forward 
thrushes and blackbirds sang, their bills still drenched with 
last night’s rain; swallows, speeding their forked flight in front 
of them, dipped and dived; the corn bunting turned his creak- 


18 The Tree of the Garden 

ing lock, and—now near, now far—as though the very spirit 
of June herself, plaintively vocalised, wandered over this green 
world, the cuckoo’s haunting notes were heard. 

Such a day it was as those who pluck their first impressions 
with the eager solicitude for flowers, that nothing of their 
delicacy may be bruised or fragrance lost, might choose for 
entering this Yorkshire world of ours, where the massy clouds, 
thrusting up their architectural systems in the sky, compensate 
for flat horizons and the lack of hills, and the plain features 
of the homely landscape draw beauty from the summer miracle 
of leaf and stalk, greenness and growth, sweet scent and sound, 
like some simple face irradiated by happy memories of child¬ 
hood. 

But to Mrs. Openshaw, on the brink of confiding all that 
she held most dear to the guardianship of this strange and 
untried soil, there seemed little comfort in the day, or reas¬ 
suring beauty in what she saw. These ineffable scents and 
sounds did but serve to quicken the mother in her and make 
more terrible the thought of separation. The sweetness of the 
clover and the bean, that at another time she would have 
drawn into her bosom with a pious rapture as if it were the 
breath of God, stabbed her like a sharpened knife. The 
cuckoo’s notes were a knell; the music of the thrush a mockery. 
Through her timorous maternal eye she took stock of this new 
environment distrustingly, doubtful if its virtues could ever 
vie with a mother’s love or replace a mother’s care, and regret¬ 
ting already her rash acceptance of any counsel not sanctioned 
by her own heart. She drew surreptitious breaths of air to 
test whether, after all, it was so strengthening as the doctor 
would have her believe. Were the drooping shoulders of the 
fragile driver any testimonial to its properties? What was his 
age, she wondered—and put her wonder into words. It was 
(he answered) fourteen years. Fourteen years! Had she 
entrusted the precious person of her only son to the immaturity 
of fourteen years? Why these fourteen years contrasted mis¬ 
erably with her son’s thirteen. Where in them was evident 


i9 


The Tree of the Garden 

the vaunted virtue of the country? And these red and white 
cows, up to their dewlaps in sorrel and buttercup, or cumbent 
in the long grass, with their great immobile horns thrust up 
like candelabra into the sunlight, chewing the interminable cud 
beneath unthinking eyes—was their milk so much superior to 
a mother’s kindness? And these fields, brimming up to the 
hedgerows on all sides of them in an odorous lattice of wild 
roses—could they truly supersede her ministrations and give 
to her son more than his mother’s love could do ? She doubted. 
She gravely doubted. Since the death of her dear husband, 
indeed, she had done little else. 


3 

All this while the chaise, drawn by the plodding mare— 
about whose patient head the voracious flies of mid-June made 
a nebular—crawled slowly southward on the narrow road. 
Dimmlesea lighthouse, like an obelisk of alabaster, lay in the 
hollow of the travellers’ backs; Spraith lighthouse, hidden by 
the upland, pricked the sky before them. On the summit of 
the Plumpton hill the driver pointed southward with his whip 
to where a patch of dark arboreal green detached itself from 
the tender hues of corn and clover and ripening meadow-grass. 

“Yon’s Whinsett,” he said. 

Whinsett—or Suddaby’s farm, which is the only part of it 
which counts to-day—has been on the simmer of expectation 
since the postman’s call this morning. All the front windows 
are hermetically closed, and the blinds funereally lowered to 
a level of mathematical exactitude. Flowerpots have been 
redded; floors scrubbed; grates polished; the dog hasped up 
in his kennel to guard against the calamity of a paw-print on 
the white doorsteps. Mrs. Suddaby, after a titanic bake in 
honour of the visitors, proposes to struggle into her black com¬ 
pany dress. Suddaby, with a due sense of the magnitude of 
issues hanging on this visit, is to-day ordering his work near 
home, to be at hand when needed, and so not to keep the com- 


20 


The Tree of the Garden 

pany waiting; but he has emphatically declined to don his 
Sunday trousers or submit to the hard-starched collar with the 
front attached, which his daughters fasten on him like a 
buckler when he goes to market and is the first thing of which 
he asks them to divest him on return—a visit to Hunmouth 
being invariably recorded by a weal of crimson round his neck. 

The Misses Suddaby (Ada and Helen) carry their hair 
screwed up in papers like the tail of a boy’s kite. Lartle (little) 
Jessie began the day with a toothache that only abated after 
school-time, when (the clock striking nine) she obtained an 
instant measure of relief, and was able to partake of a green 
apple knocked from her particular tree in the orchard with a 
clothes-prop. This afternoon, while her sisters take turns at 
holding their ears to the gauze-square in the dairy window, 
or running out to the cart-shed end to peer under their hands 
at the distant roadway where, across the fields, it climbs into 
visibility over the Plumpton hill, she has been absolved from 
school attendance for the special duty of keeping watch by the 
“street” gate, and giving Mrs. Openshaw admission when the 
time arrives. 

“Think on thoo looks alive an’ all,” her father has admon¬ 
ished her, “an’ dizzent keep trap waiting. Nobbut thoo lets 
Mrs. Openshaw see how smart thoo can be, an’ hods gate 
well back, she mud very like gi’e thee sixpence. I know very 
well she’s got it to spare.” 

Stimulated by which laudable ambition the erstwhile invalid 
has maintained a vigilant watch upon the roadway from the 
orchard, whereby she can kill two birds with one stone; keep 
outlook for the attended guests and shake down green and 
acid-looking apples into the long grass. She has refused to 
submit to the degradation of a pinafore on such a day, but 
wears her last year’s anniversary frock with a lace yoke, and 
her last new shoes with patent leather caps, bought through 
the carrier in Hunmouth by guesswork, which pinch her feet 
so painfully that she cannot walk to Sunday School in them; 
but on an occasion like this—no matter. 


21 


The Tree of the Garden 

Herculean efforts have been, and still are, in progress 
behind the stiff-curtained windows, but at Whinsett the days 
seem never long enough for the work to be accomplished in 
them (for all they begin before sunrise) and are irreconcilably 
at odds with the clock. Somebody unnamed has left the oven 
door open so that its cooking temperature has fallen; another 
culpable has removed the pan of water from the chimney-crook 
and set it on the boiler side; the pot-washing is delayed; the 
bake gets out of hand. Mrs. Suddaby stifles her accusing 
conscience with the cry: “Lawks-a-massye! yon clock’s never 
right!” when it buzzes three at her 

Overhead the floorboards are astrain with invisible struggles: 
thuds of stocking heels, rustle of garments, fall of shoes, bed¬ 
steads creaking beneath the violent exertions of those who sit 
on them to buckle Sunday footwear. 

In the midst of which prodigious preparations Mrs. Open- 
shaw arrives. Lartle Jessie, a deserter from her post in an 
evil moment of assurance, hears too late the sound of wheels, 
petrified by the orchard pump with a half-bitten apple in one 
hand and the clothes-prop in the other. The sight of Block- 
ley’s boy and Mrs. Openshaw’s hat drives her incontinently to 
the kitchen, where she cries the news. It takes everybody by 
storm. 


4 

As though imbued with the spirit of the occasion, the sun— 
sometime a struggler behind clouds—burst through the ranks 
of his fleecy foes and gave Mrs. Openshaw her first sight of 
Whinsett under gold. She saw the farm illuminated against 
a pall of sable velvet on the summit of a green field screened 
by an orchard from the dust of the high road—at this point 
no better than a laneway—to which it was tethered by a 
narrow occupation track passing under a five-barred gate and 
splitting against the angle of the garden walls into a Y that 
held the farmstead in its fork. The house, she noted, was a 
simple building of red brick, its upper windows perched in the 


22 


The Tree of the Garden 

branches of wall-trained plum and pear; its tiles deepened 
to bronze by the lichen that lined their furrows; its chimneys 
weathered and irregular, attached to the sky by one silken 
strand of smoke. Walls prolonged the building east and west, 
clasping a garden in their outstretched arms as a child might 
hold out flowers in her frock, and over the white-painted 
palissade of wood, broken in its centre by a wicket, that formed 
the garden’s lower boundary, a laburnum tree hung its tassels 
in a shower of suspended gold. Away to the south Mrs. Open- 
shaw perceived the unbroken country slant in a sweep of 
variegated green to the very waters of the Hun. Four miles 
aw~ay, Sunfleet was visible as a fringe of trees surmounted 
by a gray church tower, their silvery profile scintillating 
against the blinding beams of sunlight spilled upon the river’s 
flood. The sails of the Beachington mill gleamed white and 
motionless beyond the Fothom Bank, embedded like enamel 
in the sky. The gilded church-vane that had scarcely veered 
since daybreak in the corn-scented heaviness of air shone 
beatifically above the bleached finials. And in a sweeping 
semicircle Spraith’s sunlit peninsula curled round the distant 
estuary; a giant forearm bent defensively about the waterway 
to keep its channel smooth and shelter great ships against the 
noisy waves and windy buffets of the open sea. To Mrs. 
Openshaw this vision of the great river broadened and tran- 
quillised came upon her unexpectedly with a knock at the heart. 
Viewed thus, lit by sun and softened by sentiment, it looked 
no man-kept watercourse for the grimy passage of worldly 
merchandise, but a true and living river of God. The light 
upon it, she thought, poured straight from His brow. These 
silent steamers that met and passed like dreams, fading when 
the light left them, were spiritual vessels cargoed with souls; 
their port Heaven. Up such a river surely did her husband 
voyage those years ago; past such a lighthouse, sheltered by 
such a promontoried arm. And this pasture where the cows 
were grazing had been his; this ruddy farmhouse with its 
comfortable skirt of bricky outbuildings and the pale, almost 


23 


The Tree of the Garden 

limpid smoke loitering above its chimneys; this shady orchard 
filled with green dimness and long grass and starred with discs 
of gleaming gold. She impressed the significance of what she 
saw upon her son, with a gentle tightening of her fingers 
over his, that he might be prompted to regard this place with 
due reverence for the father it so fittingly memorialised. 

The chaise stopped. Abram Blockley’s lad looped up the 
reins, crying “Noo, hoss!” in a ferocious voice, as near as 
possible the counterpart of that his master used when an animal 
so far forgot itself as to sneeze or yawn or shake its headgear 
in public, for the mare strayed at once with amplified nostrils 
towards the tantalising fringe of grass. The running figure of 
Suddaby burst with genial abruptness through the garden gate 
and took Mrs. Openshaw’s emotion by surprise. “Noo, marm! 
I’se glad to see you, you may depend.” She murmured, “Mr. 
Suddaby?” on a gentle note of interrogation, and tendered a 
gloved hand. Suddaby surveyed his own with momentary 
misgiving. 

But not to keep the gloved hand impolitely waiting, he gave 
the horny palm a hurried polish on his trousers, and without 
further inspection committed it to Mrs. Openshaw’s fingers. 
He was less diffident with Master Guy, whose hand came 
forward at the introduction, “My son, Mr. Suddaby,” insti¬ 
gated by a gentle circuit of the maternal arm. “Anybody 
could see that, marm,” the farmer told her—a remark so 
grateful to Mrs. Openshaw’s hearing as to bring a sudden 
wetness upon her lashes. “And here comes missus, Marm,” 
he said. “You’ll ’a to excuse her being a bit latish to welcome 
you; but she only started to get breakfast ready,” a pleasantry 
that introduced the farmer’s wife, who, having hurriedly 
scraped the adherent strings of paste from her wrists and 
fingers, and flung them back into the bowl, came hastening 
down the garden trod, wiping her hands on her apron in 
preparation for amenities. 

Mrs. Openshaw’s interest, torn relentlessly from her son, 
to whom alone in this last hour it sought to cling, was whirled 


24 


The Tree of the Garden 

in a vortex of welcomes and regrets; greetings smothered in 
apologies, and pardon sought for hospitable shortcomings as 
yet, on her part, utterly unperceived. She must suffer the 
history of the belated bake and the chilled oven, and the 
unexpectedness of her arrival. There were so many things 
to do and say that it seemed as if anything in the nature of a 
beginning could never be made with them. Suddaby, dis¬ 
tracted between the luggage and his desire to show Mrs. 
Openshaw instantly round the farm, in one breath rebuked 
his wife for keeping their visitor on foot, and himself involved 
her in a long account of the sad mortality among his lambs. 
His wife had not less harrowing recitals of kitchen and poultry 
yard, during which—the trunks being now dismounted and 
laid upon the grass before the palissade for subsequent con¬ 
veyance to the house—the visitors passed up the garden ; 
Mrs. Suddaby politely depreciative and apologetic; Suddaby 
brimful of hospitable enthusiasm, with a disposition to pour 
out at one helping all the riches of the farm into Mrs. Open- 
shaw’s embarrassed lap. “You’ll ’a to look round place before 
you go, marm.” 

5 

Within doors, Mrs. Openshaw entered more familiar terri¬ 
tory. From the little entrance hall with its grained staircase 
she was ushered into the best sitting-room, under the impres¬ 
sion that a seat would there be offered her, conducing to the 
disclosure of all the vital matters protesting to be told. But, 
no! As many conflicting interests arose on every hand about 
her here as in the garden. The room smelt like a haber¬ 
dasher’s shop from a profusion of antimacassars denied the 
sun, and pegged mats and starched curtains, all kept in sacred 
seclusion behind the half-drawn yellow blind. Geraniums in 
vivid red pots that vied with their own blooms, and a hanging 
basket of Stars of Bethlehem, still further subdued the light 
and conspired with the opulently patterned curtains to resist 
the sun and plunge the chamber into a golden gloom, but the 
paint-work was fresh and joyous in white and two shades of 



25 


The Tree of the Garden 

blue, and the oilcloth which served in lieu of a carpet was 
florid with purple foxgloves and red roses. Everything ap¬ 
peared to be antimacassared—the portly Bible on the polished 
loo table, all the chairs, the pictures, and even the fireplaces— 
and the antimacassars in turn were caught up with the brightest 
shades of ribbon, remnants of sashes and hair-lengths that 
had at one time zoned waists and bedecked the tresses of the 
Misses Suddaby and flashed resplendent at kissing rings and 
anniversary teas. Touched in spirit by the manifold evidences 
of domestic toil and devotion, Mrs. Openshaw murmured 
admiring “Beautifuls” that fluttered about her lips like butter¬ 
flies; but she found the room close and the atmosphere stag¬ 
nant, and resolved to mention that her son must be allowed a 
plenitude of fresh air. 

From this secluded sanctuary, just as she deemed the 
moment opportune to put her fingers together with a termina- 
tive: “And now, Mrs. Suddaby, with regard to my son . . 
she was inveigled into the parlour where Guy would hence¬ 
forth take his meals—a somewhat darker room on the other 
side of the hall, though less antimacassary and with more 
patent evidences of occupation. An old oak corner-cupboard 
filled the angle between the window and the door, crowded 
with crockery and rustic table-ware. A torpid grandfather’s 
clock tick-tacked laboriously from a second corner in the 
manner that the Carrier counts his change, with an occasional 
hiccough of dubiety as though a sixpence were in question. 
Facing the window along the inner wall an aged sofa, covered 
with horsehair and suffering from an internal complaint, spread 
its length as far as the second door leading into the kitchen, 
which closed spasmodically at the moment of Mrs. Openshaw’s 
introduction. Nevertheless, the kitchen showed empty when 
the advancing company came into it—though the air, to Mrs. 
Suddaby’s practised senses, betrayed a state of commotion 
as if but recently disturbed. A great wood fire blazed busily 
up the deep breasted chimney, whose flames licked the furred 
velvet sides of a fat cast-iron kettle suspended from a crook, 


26 


The Tree of the Garden 

and beginning to purr already with soft complacent puffs of 
steam. The sun fell in hot assault upon the drawn kitchen 
blind, between which and the burning panes buzzed innumer¬ 
able captive bees, protracting pantomimic shadows on the calico. 
A vast assemblage of cooking pots and cake tins cumbered 
the central table; rows of cheese cakes and sweet buns w T ere 
set out in regiments before the window, in front of which, 
from a hook in the ceiling-joist, swung a rotund straining 
cloth, twisting slowly on its cord, filled with wrecked sections 
and broken honeycomb from the hive, taken by Suddaby this 
morning, and dropping great tears of gold into a pancheon. 
“For bee-drink,” Mrs. Suddaby explained. 

Dried herbs hung in little bundles from the rafters, and 
some blouses and white petticoats were set out in folded order 
to air on the wooden rack that ran the ceiling’s width before 
the fire. Immediately by the door stood the painted settle that 
the postman sits down on to sort his letters on arrival and say 
“Thank you” to a proffer of refreshment, which he never 
declines. 

The door was open. Outside, indefatigable hens were peck¬ 
ing the burnt crusts from the interior of a pie-dish, laid out 
for the purpose, which they rattled noisily over the cobbles. 
Beyond them, on the foldyard wall, a gray cat lay extended 
in sunny slumber, burning hot. Mrs. Openshaw perceived 
the handle of the pump and part of the swill-tub. The farmer’s 
wife cried “Sh-h-h!” and clapped her hands at a band of 
inquisitive geese, from whose white backs and snowy necks 
a visible reflection was cast into the kitchen. Mrs. Openshaw 
must scrutinise the oven, intolerably hot, and yet not hot 
enough—a new range being insinuated. Her attention was 
drawn to the state of the fire-bricks. She was invited to 
remark the doorstep, trodden concave beneath innumerable 
hobnails, admitting draughts in winter and mice after harvest. 
Led by her guide, she passed from the kitchen heat into the 
cool dimness of the dairy, made pleasantly subacid with the 
scent of cream, displayed in shallow bowls on shelves around 


27 


The Tree of the Garden 

the churn, and peeped—at Mrs. Suddaby’s invitation—through 
the puze pane to see the cows slashing their tails in the 
tree-shadowed coolness about the cart-shed, and the ducks 
sleeping on the greensward by the muddy well. The larder 
was thrown open to her gaze, replete with fruit pies and 
cheese cakes, with hams swinging from the ceiling hooks, and 
great jars exhaling the refreshful pungency of vinegar. On 
the red-tiled floor, beneath the egg-shelf, Dibner had flung the 
rabbit fallen to his prowess overnight. It lay, showing its white 
underside; its large eye glazed, its muzzle glued to the tile 
with a clot of blood. Mrs. Openshaw had no enthusiasm for 
Dibner’s venery. She learned with dismay that Dibner was 
but fifteen—no more than two years older than her son. And 
to be entrusted, single handed, with a firearm. Her prudence 
recoiled. 

They retraced their footsteps to the hot kitchen. The Misses 
Ada and Helen Suddaby, coughing at the head of the back 
staircase (where they and Lartle Jessie had been clinging this 
past ten minutes to the top stair like shipwrecked mariners 
to a raft) descended as though just emerging from their 
chamber, in a waft of forget-me-not bouquet. They entered 
the kitchen with heads erect and averted faces, treading on one 
another’s heels after the manner of worshippers leaving chape). 
Each, when named, offered to Mrs. Openshaw a limp hand 
that dropped of its own weight to the owner’s skirt on being 
released. Mrs. Openshaw extended graciousness to both in 
turn, hoped they were well, was very pleased to meet them, 
and enquired of Mrs. Suddaby their ages—an act of con¬ 
descension by no means unresented—the issue being ultimately 
raised as to whether Mrs. Openshaw considered them incapable 
of answering for themselves. She did not think that, but she 
thought the farmer’s daughters pale and fragile, and looked 
in vain for that robustness which the country is reputed to 
encourage. A lugubrious cough from the direction of the 
dresser served as introduction to Lartle Jessie, who slid into 
the kitchen under cover of her sisters’ handshakes, and stood 


28 


The Tree of the Garden 

with joined hands and dejected head in an attitude of meek¬ 
ness befitting one who had so lately lost sixpence under melan¬ 
choly circumstances. Filled with reflected apprehension for 
her son, Mrs. Openshaw’s first comment was upon the cough. 
“What a dreadful cough, Mrs. Suddaby. Surely your little 
daughter should be taking something for it?” Mrs. Suddaby 
smiled to reassure the visitor. “Why, marm, it’s just her way. 
She’s coughed like that since she was a lartle bairn. We don’t 
think much about syke coughs i’ country. I expect she’ll grow 
out of it when she gets older. Ada did.” 

Mrs. Openshaw shook a dubious head, subsiding into be¬ 
wildered acquiescence. All this display of optimistic neglect 
made her tremble for her son. Guns and coughs (it seemed) 
were thought no more of here than eggs or milk. Was the 
doctor’s judgment right? She wondered. Very much she won¬ 
dered. 


6 

Suddaby arriving at this juncture to announce the safe 
bestowal of Master Openshaw’s luggage upstairs, Mrs. Open¬ 
shaw begged to be conducted to her son’s bedroom, where her 
first hope—with a hand plunged between the sheets—was that 
the bed had been thoroughly aired. At a propitious moment 
she stole a peep beneath the valances to see what secrets (if any) 
they hid. In this respect her fears were instantly allayed; they 
hid nothing more dreadful than bleached white floorboards— 
no insidious fluff menaced her son’s lungs. Was the water in 
his carafe fresh and pure? She confessed to a dread of strange 
water, and seemed not visibly reassured by Mrs. Suddaby’s 
statement that it was the same they drank themselves, and that 
it came from the pump her visitor had noticed through the 
kitchen door, with the further recommendation that the well 
stood right below the foldyard—where swarms of midges hov¬ 
ered over pools of stagnant ordure—and that it was accounted 
the best water round Whinsett end, being so fresh and whole¬ 
some that the pump never siped or ran dry even after three days’ 


29 


The Tree of the Garden 

threshing, when they had to lead water continually from it 
to the engine trough. Mrs. Openshaw was imbued with the 
belief that the very best of water round Whinsett end might 
still fall short of being good enough for her son, and begged 
that for his usage it should be boiled. The farmer’s wife, 
albeit visibly impressed with such a recommendation, was dis¬ 
posed to deny nothing to her visitor, who held their rent and 
tenancy in the hollow of her hand. The promise was given, 
and for two days Master Openshaw sipped his drinking water 
tepid. He found it cooler and more refreshing to the palate on 
subsequent days. 

The spacious trunk was now unlocked; its lid thrown open; 
its contents reverently withdrawn; their use and sanctity ex¬ 
plained. Mrs. Openshaw handled her son’s garments with a 
swelling pride, a visible exaltation of the feelings that up¬ 
lifted her and made her face radiant. Each article taken 
from the trunk must be unfolded like a scroll of scriptured 
vellum and adored before her reverent hands refolded it for 
transference to the growing pile of garments in Mrs. Sudda- 
by’s arms. The farmer’s wife, steeped in the interest of in¬ 
spection, received the objects from her visitor with a con¬ 
scientious assumption of the latter’s sacramental care; breathed 
pious admiration in a hushed voice; tested the quality of tex¬ 
tures between appreciative fingers and thumb; marked the fine 
embroidered monograms on the cambric handkerchiefs; paid 
tribute to the lavish complement of Master Openshaw’s outfit. 
Mrs. Openshaw personally superintended the disposal of his 
garments in the drawer-chest of veneered mahogany with glass 
handles. “We will have the underclothing here, please, Mrs. 
Suddaby. His night things there. . . . This drawer shall be 
kept for his handkerchiefs and collars. Here we might lay the 
shirts.” Not till she had seen this service done and rearranged 
the room for her son’s occupancy to correspond more nearly 
with the room in which he slept at home—giving a hundred 
super-finicking touches of finality to bed, washstand, bath, 
mirror, chairs, towel rail and all the other objects of her 


30 


The Tree of the Garden 

son’s future environment—did the maternal solicitude subside 
for lack of fuel. She left the room at last with a lingering 
look of half content, and followed Mrs. Suddaby down the 
stairs with a troubled hand upon her boy. 

Meanwhile, in the pauses between listening at the stairfoot 
to what could be gleaned of the conversation taking place 
above, the Misses Suddaby had spread the cloth over the par¬ 
lour table and laid out on its snowy surface a regal display. 
There was a whole spiced cake, rising from a fringed doyley on 
a glass cake-stand, corpulent with almond paste and arctic with 
sugar-icing, in which hundreds of silver pellets were embedded. 
The knife had already defined some half dozen generous wedges 
in its snowy circumference, to assuage the modesty of guests 
and assure them of the ample scale on which hospitality was 
here to be understood and practised by both parties to it. 
A section of honey stood in a glass bowl, slowly draining 
the contents of its torn outer cells into a rising lake of gold. 
There was a fine dishful of fat shrimps. All those below the 
requisite standard of chest measurement had been weeded out— 
to present themselves later on the kitchen table, where only 
the largest heads were ever thrown away. Suddaby’s self had 
washed and boiled them—they came but this morning from 
their home in the brown and briny waters of the Hun, jumping 
over the basket side—for Suddaby knew all the wiles and 
ways of fish, and Suddaby’s own voice vouched for their 
excellence. “They’re best srimps i’ the world, marm, an’ 
ivvrybody’ll tell ye same.” As if heaped shrimps and trickling 
lucid honey were inadequate to express the Suddaby hospitality 
in all its five syllables, here on the same table were spring 
onions, plump lettuce, and robust radishes, in company with 
lemon cheese cakes that vied with the very honey for richness 
and flavour and complexion, spice-bread in buttered slices, and 
a spongiest of Swiss cake intersected with two layers of rasp¬ 
berry jam such as is usually reserved for anniversaries and 
choir teas. And there was an inch-thick steak of succulent 
red ham frizzling odorously in a frying pan over the kitchen 


3i 


The Tree of the Garden 

fire, and spitting hot grease each time the attentive fork dis¬ 
turbed it—to say nothing of obese brown eggs. If farm fare 
were the proper medicine for her son’s health, then Mrs. 
Openshaw should have rejoiced greatly, for here it was in 
abundance—rich, varied, and substantial. 

Instead, the sight disquieted her. She feared Mrs. Suddaby 
had made far too many preparations for their coming. Her 
son was unaccustomed to such heavy meals. Even on the 
threshold of surrendering him to strangers, under the doctor’s 
decree, she struggled to prolong the operation of that fatal 
regime he had been brought here to escape. The honey— 
especially when sealed within its .comb—was dangerous for 
children, who were apt in their appreciation of it not to eject 
the wax. Stings even (she had been told) lurked occasionally 
in the unstrained syrup. The cake—except judiciously par¬ 
taken of at Christmastide—seemed too rich for secular oc¬ 
casions. The shrimps—“I hope you will not feel hurt, Mrs. 
Suddaby, if we leave these lovely shrimps untasted; but my 
son is quite unused to such meals. For his sake we are com¬ 
pelled to live most simply. And I fear . . . after a journey 
. . .” Instead, he had some bread and butter, carefully scraped 
by the maternal hand of its superfluous richness, with a small 
portion of cake from which the deadly silver pellets were first 
removed—these being subsequently partaken of by Lartle 
Jessie, whose custom it was to make the round of the kitchen 
table to collect such silvery contributions from the family after 
festal teas; part of which she would proceed to eat upon the 
spot, the remainder being knotted up in a corner of her 
retentive handkerchief for subsequent consumption, providing 
(it appeared) an excellent accompaniment to fallen plums or 
green apples. Also Mrs. Openshaw’s son might indulge in a 
light-boiled egg—dark shelled, if Mrs. Suddaby pleased—as 
being more nutritious. For Mrs. Openshaw’s own part, en¬ 
veloped in the fast falling shadows of separation, she had no 
hunger. The ham-steak was cut into by courtesy; she nibbled 
a leaf of lettuce; crumbled some bread as if to feed robins 


32 


The Tree of the Garden 

with it; sipped her tea. But her heart was at her throat. 
She coveted a little secret weeping, if only to ease her bosom 
and translate all this unutterable sadness that oppressed her 
into an idiom more familiar to her sex. 

The door between the kitchen and the parlor being left 
open, according to the canons of a rural courtesy, so that the 
guests might eat with complete confidence in a hospitality at¬ 
tendant on their slightest need, intimate conversation between 
Mrs. Openshaw and her son was restricted. Seated at the 
table by the kitchen window, where some of the tins and 
cheese cakes had been pushed aside to make a place for him, 
Blockley’s boy secreted a prodigious store of hospitality beneath 
his narrow shoulders. His mouth was always full, and he 
drank and spoke with it so, stirring his tea as if he ground 
a coffee-mill, and imbibing it thirstily with a thumb over the 
spoon to protect him from swallowing it. From time to time 
Suddaby—whose goodwill seemed inexhaustible, and who no 
sooner left the kitchen than he came back to it with a fresh 
load of communicative friendship for his guests—appeared at 
the open door to stimulate appetite. “Dean’t be afraid o’ them 
srimps, marm; we’ve gotten as many more i’ arder for oorsens.” 

To the memory of her dead husband, also, he paid a fervent 
tribute. “He was a gentleman, marm,” he told her through 
the open door. “There wasn’t ought I ever asked him for 
but what I got. Aye, I mind when I used to gan an’ see 
him i’ yon great place of his i’ Dock Street. He nivver let 
me come away but what he stuffed a bottle o’ rum i’ my coat 
pocket, ti bring home wi’ me. 

“Gaw bless me, missus!” he added, in a hushed and startled 
voice, to his wife. “What’s amiss wi’ her?” 

For, unable longer to withstand the fears and apprehensions 
set ablaze by the farmer’s incautious words, Mrs. Openshaw 
had risen to her feet, and with an anguished: “O, Mr. Sud¬ 
daby . . . please! . . .” passed in haste to the far door. 

“Thoo’s offended her,” Suddaby’s wife informed him in a 
shocked tone. 


The Tree of the Garden 33 

“Offended her!” the farmer expostulated, in a whisper that 
filled both room and kitchen. ‘T what way, missus?” 

“Wisht! she’s calling of you,” Ada Suddaby suddenly inter¬ 
posed. “She wants to speak wi’ ye. Don’t keep her waiting. 
She’s stood i’ passage.” 

“Speak wi’ me!” the farmer exclaimed in blank amazement. 
“Why, she was speaking wi’ me. What i’ the warld diz she 
want to speak to me for out yonder.” 

But he hastened through the parlour, filled with misgivings 
as to raised rents and terminations of tenancy, to find Mrs. 
Openshaw awaiting him with a flushed face at the foot of the 
staircase. 

“Mr. Suddaby . . . please,” she besought him, without 
loss of time, in a troubled undertone, “there is one thing 
I would like to emphasise before I leave. I hope you will 
respect my wishes in this small matter. My son . . .”—the 
thing, she knew, was hard to formulate, but the urgency of 
circumstance and the shortness of time left her no great 
choice in words—“ . . . my son knows nothing at all about 
his father’s business. About any business. These are subjects 
I have always kept most scrupulously from him. He is too 
young . . . far too young to be burdened with such matters. 
You spoke just now—most kindly, I am aware, and with a 
touching appreciation of my dear husband’s generosity and 
goodness of heart, for which I am deeply grateful. But may 
I beg of you not again to allude to the nature of his business, 
before my son.” 

“What, marm!” said Suddaby, relieved of his worst fears, 
and lost in the vapour of pure amazement, “Dizn’t Master 
Guy know yon spot i’ Dock Street at all ?” 

“Not in the least, Mr. Suddaby,” Guy’s mother replied, 
with a momentary closing of her eyes. “I think, perhaps, 
you are inclined to overestimate his years. He is only thirteen. 
It is my wish to keep his childhood free of all the perplexing 
things of life as long as possible.” 

“By Go, marm!” Suddaby exclaimed; “but if yon business 


34 


The Tree of the Garden 

belonged to me I should 'a ta’en my son to see it, you may 
depend. Why, I’ll awander there’s not a better trade i’ 
Oommuth.” 

He ceased, not through any failure in the flow of words, 
but constrained by Mrs. Openshaw’s restrictive forefinger and 
admonitory lips. They returned in silence: she to her seat 
at the parlour table by the side of her son—he to the kitchen, 
to confide to the eyes interrogating him: “It caps all!” 

7 

All this while the grandfather’s clock in the parlour, if 
masticating the moments more leisurely than Blockley’s boy 
bit cheese cakes, devoured time not less surely. Mrs. Open- 
shaw, stealing glances of dismay at the inexorable dial, tor¬ 
mented herself already with bitter foretastes of departure that 
were her substitute for tea. Signs of restlessness on his visi¬ 
tor’s part and vague allusions to the chaise communicated their 
disquiet to the farmer, who saw a hundred projects tumbling 
into ruin, and protested: “Why . . . what, marm! You won’t 
think o’ leaving us yet awhile!” He even begged his guest to 
stay the night at Whinsett. “Missus’ll fittle you up a bed 
i’ no time, marm. She’s gotten plenty o’ good feather beds 
an’ fresh clean sheets.” Mrs. Suddaby joined her persuasions 
to his, saying she would be “proud” if their visitor would 
take them as she found them, and stay the night. Neither 
of them ever guessed how near Mrs. Openshaw approached to 
being persuaded, for in truth her heart was full. But the 
remembrance of her promise to the doctor, and her visualisation 
of Mrs. Lattimer’s triumphant face when the maternal weak¬ 
ness should be disclosed, deterred her. She thanked them 
with an emotional warmth that the Misses Suddaby mistook 
for hauteur, in declining this proposal, but “it was out of 
the question,” she said. 

Suddaby was inconsolable at the impending departure of 
their honoured guest, whom his enthusiasm sought to lead 


The Tree of the Garden 35 

to a hundred spots of interest at once. “You’ll gan away 
wi’oot seeing half, marm; and farm belongs ye.” 

All this exuberant solicitude on her behalf, indeed, but 
served to stir up Mrs. Openshaw’s own trouble and put 
her mind in a whirl. She would have asked no greater boon 
than to be allowed to consecrate these swiftly ebbing moments 
to her son; to take him apart into some sheltered, silent place, 
where their spirits might commune together, undisturbed by 
intrusive sights and voices; but she found no strength to stem 
the current of the farmer’s obvious desires. With gracious 
surrender she suffered herself to be led about the farm, like a 
horse by a head-rope; picked her prim way with discreetly lifted 
skirts in the wake of Suddaby’s active and unhampered legs; 
peeped into dim calf-houses where feeble bodies struggled in the 
straw, and tottered pitifully on unstable legs; peered over 
pig-stye doors and saw the prone length of indolent pink 
flesh in its pungent bedding, with a dozen flaxen piglings that 
tugged noisily at as many teats; cast an apprehensive glance into 
the stables—though the great horses were away at grass, or on 
the land; viewed the hens—that indeed hemmed her round in a 
clamorous, feathery ring, expectant of their evening meal, 
and were brushed aside to right and left by the farmer’s un¬ 
ceremonious foot. 

All these things and many others shown to her she perceived 
with a sort of mental rejection—repudiating what was offered 
to her eyes, just as the physical part of her resisted food. 

The sense of impending separation troubled the serenity 
of the ineffable evening light, as a breath stirs water, distorting 
everything she looked upon. Led by the relentless Suddaby, 
she wandered through an agitated unfamiliar world—held to 
reality only by her boy. One moment her skirts brushed the 
knee-deep grasses in the orchard, where she viewed a wooden 
pump with an inverted bucket on its head; the next she was 
moving towards a little horseshoe pond at the bottom of a 
long pasture, its placid waters rippled by the clockwork 
motions of escaping waterfowl. From here (marm) it was 


36 The Tree of the Garden 

but a step (across yon plank and stile, see-ye, marm) to the 
seeds close, from which she might obtain a peep at the ten- 
acre Suddaby had spoken of. 


8 

By this time they were close in sight of the farm once more. 
Blockley’s mare, yoked to the dilapidated chaise, crunched 
the juicy herbage at the foot of the garden palings. The cows, 
slashing their tasselled tails, and horning their fly-tormented 
flanks, sauntered gravely across the pasture to the foldyard 
gate. The brightness of the sun, uninterrupted and serene, 
fell upon the country with a beauty almost unbearable. 

Before the garden gate, in a scent of tansy, the formal 
good-byes were given. Suddaby declared: “I’se real sorry 
you’re leaving us so soon, marm.'’ Feigning an admirable 
surprise, he fell back to make way for the figure of his wife, 
with the exclamation: “What i’ the world ha’ ye gotten 
there, missus?” 

It was, as well he knew, a basket of new-laid eggs—warm, 
not a few of them, from their natal nest—that Mrs. Suddaby 
pushed under the chaise seat, with some sections of honey 
and a bundle of spring onions and garden lettuce. Mrs. Open- 
shaw protested: “Oh! you are too kind. Really! Really! 
How can I thank you!” Her gratitude, merging her all sud¬ 
denly into deeper emotions, grew humid. Her son, she knew, 
was in safe, good, loving hands. God bless him. God bless 
them—her—everybody. 

Mrs. Openshaw bestowed the final fervent kiss upon her 
boy; a hundred kisses in the guise of one—that would have 
been a thousand but for the intrusive scrutiny of these alien 
eyes. The word was given. Blockley’s boy, sitting backward 
to witness all the details of this leave-taking, like a spectator 
in the gallery at a play, and looking not a ha’porth bigger 
for all his shrimps and cheese cakes, shook the reins, screwing 
“kt-kt’s” from the side-pockets in his mouth; the mare leaned 


37 


The Tree of the Garden 

to the traces; the wheels revolved. Mrs. Openshaw, bathed 
in glorious late afternoon sunlight, slid slowly away from the 
attendant group in a swim of tears. Guy followed the chaise 
some little way, but the distance widened between them. Mrs. 
Openshaw, too blurred to see him, waved a stricken handker¬ 
chief ; he responded with his hat. Both were possessed by well- 
nigh overpowering emotions: she—to stop the chaise for him ; 
he—to pursue. But destiny proved stronger than the desires 
and fears of both, and Blockley’s boy of the narrow and 
despised shoulders, urging the mare inexorably onward, in¬ 
creased the division between Mrs. Openshaw and her son, 
as if he had been a plenipotentiary of fate. Guns, horses, drink¬ 
ing water, damp sheets, cliffs, improper diet, rough speech filled 
Mrs. Openshaw’s consciousness with thick mists of dreadful 
apprehension, to the prejudice of all clear seeing. So, with so 
many dangers blocking up the passageways of sight, it is not 
surprising that she failed to note along the Whinsett laneway, 
as she went, the presence of yet another danger to her son, 
that took the form of an unkempt and ragged lass, who lay on 
her elbows tenting cows amid the tangle of roadside grasses 
as matted as her own hair, and watched the chaise go by. 


Ill 


# 


I 


F INGERS of both hands are needed to count the mem¬ 
bers of the Suddaby household. Suddaby the elder, 
with Elizabeth his wedded wife, George Herbert, 
Dibner, the Misses Ada, Helen, and Jessie, with Allison Mar- 
riot the hired man—eight souls in bed and board. Mrs. 
Openshaw’s son makes the ninth, and it might be no more 
than fitting to allot our tenth finger to the dog, for he is of the 
true family, sitting faithfully by his master’s elbow at meals, 
or lying extended before the fire at night, where he is as much 
trodden on as the hearthrug, and fifes sharper music than 
any Allison Marriott blows on his tin whistle by the fender- 
end when work is done. The cats are of a wilder race, only 
admitted to the circle by the lowest degree of toleration. 
They prowl into the kitchen on their stomachs, sit with their 
noses against the oven, or, at meals, skulk warily among the 
big boots beneath the table, where they growl ferociously over 
such bones or gristle as (being an encumbrance to the diner’s 
plate) are cast below cloth for ease of disposal. Their respec¬ 
tive names are Jack, Jerrie, and Joseph—no trouble, appar¬ 
ently, having been taken to ascertain their gender before 
baptism, since they are ladies every one, and two of them 
grandmothers. The dog’s name is Bob, to which he answers 
with indifferent alacrity at bedtime. 

Of all this household Suddaby is the animating force. 
Spare in build, and something slightly below the normal 
stature, with grey threads in his hair and beard, and the 
quick, sharp eye of a shrewmouse, he is the very incarnation 
of vigilance and activity. If there is a pin in the rug, he 

38 


39 


The Tree of the Garden 

sees it. His heel is the first to thump the floor on a morning; 
it is he who lights the kitchen fire with the wisp of straw 
and kindling set out to dry in the oven corner by Lartle 
Jessie overnight; his the voice that snaps peremptory Christian 
names at the foot of the backstair in the gray dawn, as if he 
were breaking twigs across his knee. He is so energetic about 
his business and moves so quickly that at times, hurrying 
round the premises, he gives the effect of two men—one in 
pursuit of the other: an illusion, moreover enhanced by his 
protean change of implements, so that the first figure carries 
a fork and the second a draining spade—and will begin a 
sentence at the kitchen door whose termination has to be 
shouted (to be audible at all) from somewhere in the vicinity 
of the stackgarth gate. A life of unceasing labour since 
boyhood and before has not dulled his appetite for work, or 
taught him the blessings of repose. He can no more withstand 
a task undone than a terrier can resist a rat-hole, and all the 
stray jobs about the house and farm that are nobody’s business 
he makes his own. Thus he is clock-winder, watch-repairer, 
knife-sharpener, belt and braces mender, candle-fittler, fish- 
dresser, crab and shrimp boiler, hair-dresser, apothecary, phy¬ 
sician and farrier, and a dozen more professions besides, in 
every one of which departments he makes no small pretension 
and takes no small pride, prescribing for symptoms with as 
much confidence as he would ring a pig or hone a scythe, 
and deriving joy from his denunciation of those very short¬ 
comings on the part of others which yield him the chance to 
display his abilities. He has not to rest on his spade to give 
“good day,” but chirrups like a cricket over scythe or fork, 
and sings the louder in proportion to his toil. At table only 
the hottest pudding balks him; he will clap the shank of a 
meat bone to his mouth with a hand at either end, and polish 
his loquacious way up and down the length of it, as though 
he were playing his souvenirs on an ocarina. And his talk 
is worth the hearing. The riches of Holderness are in his 
tongue, that wags over half a century of life in this beloved 


40 


The Tree of the Garden 

corner of the world; from gravel-catching at Kenham Beach 
and fishing in the Hun, to “wringling” at Sunfleet as a lad; 
with histories of harvests past and gone, and flail-swinging 
(before the peripatetic threshers were common) and tales of 
ancient worthies long since stamped into dust by the foot 
of time. 

George Herbert lacks his father’s speech for temporal af¬ 
fairs, though he shows more physical strength, without adroit¬ 
ness, and could accommodate a parent in each compartment 
of his trousers. His arms, as far as the elbow, are hard and 
brown as table legs, and bearded like the cocoanut. The 
chairs creak when he sits on them, and when he lets drop his 
armoured boot on the floor tiles it is as if a chimneypot had 
fallen. In coming through the kitchen door his shoulders 
brush both jambs and darken all within till he has taken his 
seat, but his strength is fortunately subordinated to piety, the 
Primitive body claiming him as its own. He keeps a Bible 
by his bedside, with an illuminated text to mark the place 
in it, and reads his nightly chapter by candle-light after 
getting into bed, an act prefaced by the rattle of his belt and 
trousers’ buttons on the bare floor. The devotion itself has a 
melancholy character, like the west wind soughing down the 
kitchen chimney, from which, indeed, and the snores of Dibner 
and Allison, it is difficult to be distinguished. Even Suddaby, 
whose ears analyse sounds almost as keenly as a dog’s nose 
does scents, has been puzzled by it on occasions. 

It is rare, however, that the sound of George Herbert’s 
devotion can be heard in these days, for he courts the daughter 
of John Barmforth’s hind at Hallum, and goes to see her 
every evening across the fields, three miles each way, returning 
with his trousers dew-drenched to the knees, long after all the 
others are a-bed. For this reason the kitchen lamp is left 
burning, and a jug of hot milk stands in the oven against 
his return (with a quarter-inch skim on by the time he 
disturbs it) ; but despite this provision his mother sleeps but 
fitfully until she hears the sound of the kitchen latch and 


4* 


The Tree of the Garden 

the fall of his boots by the fender. George Herbert is twenty- 
four, though the plow-stoop upon his broad shoulders and 
the hispid growth about his neck make him look older. Two 
of the pigs fattening for the market are his, and he has also 
three sheep feeding along with his father’s score ; so that, with 
a proper appreciation of the value of all coins from halfpence 
upward, he bids fair to be a man of substance, and (if he will 
only deny himself sufficiently) to take some day a farm of his 
own, as he aspires to do, and sit master in his own kitchen 
and work harder than a hind. 

Dibner, who is little turned fifteen, gives promise of a 
growth and bulk scarcely inferior to his brother; but he has 
not displayed any spiritual indications worth speaking of, 
beyond a passion for anniversary teas, in which respect he 
ranks as an expert, and can advise in what essential these 
suffer or excel—where there is the richest Swiss cake, the best 
rolls, the hottest and strongest tea; or which table should 
be attended by all who appreciate good ham. He cultivates 
no particular place of worship, but attends most of them 
at the evening service, in turn, to watch the worshippers 
come out. At anniversaries and harvest festivals he sits in 
the gallery or the hindmost of the raised benches at the back 
of the chapel, where it is so hot that the hair-oil runs down 
men’s ears; or, if there is no room for him here, is of those 
who hang on to the window-sills and startle worshippers with 
ghostly white nose-ends compressed against the glass. He has 
no hostages to fortune in the guise of sheep or pigs, and bears 
the reputation of a spendthrift, thinking nothing of sixpence 
for a seat at the first table of a public tea, and dissipating 
(it is said) as much as five shillings at Beachington Fair, 
and twice that amount at Hunmouth. This latter, however, 
is no real proof of prodigality, for even George Herbert has 
not missed a Hunmouth Fair these ten years, albeit he expends 
nothing in smoke or drink, and comes back as sober as he 
went, to read his bedly portion from the Book. 

Allison Marriot, although the hired man, suffers no visible 


42 


The Tree of the Garden 

inequality within doors, being bidden to cake, or to a second 
cup of tea, like one of the family, and suffered to roast his 
great boots at the fire from any chair but Suddaby’s, which 
is held sacred to the Master and monopolised by Lartle Jessie 
the moment he quits it. 

With George Herbert and Dibner, Allison occupies the 
crooked bedroom over the kitchen, whose hot flue—with an 
almanac pinned on to it—separates the two beds. Stretching 
a head from the pillow it is easy to catch sound of the talk 
going on at the fireside below—even if the floorboards offered 
the least impediment to mutual hearing, which they do not; 
conversation at all times being freely maintained through 
them. By a window just big enough to thrust a forehead 
out of, the room looks on to the foldyard, and is pleasantly 
impregnated with its odours. At the foot of the double-bed 
reposes Allison Marriot’s box of plain deal, with a hasp and 
padlock big enough to secure a granary, which he brought 
on his shoulder from Peterwick five years ago last Martinmas, 
and which—except by the Misses Suddaby, when they clean 
the bedroom—has not been moved since. 

Its owner is, according to Suddaby, one of the best behaved 
lads i’ this part o’ the country; and when the farmer is in 
extra good spirits, or the harvest has reached and liberated 
the best in him, he lets it be understood that Allison Marriot 
shall stay here for all time. Nobody knows his right age, 
and himself has but a vague opinion on it, but he is thought to 
be somewhere in the thirties. 

“Why! it caps me,” Suddaby exclaims at times, when the 
topic crops up, “thoo nivver asks thy mother how old thoo is, 
Allison. I’ll awander she knows, if onnybody diz.” To which 
Allison returns, “Aye!” He is rarely heard to say more, but 
makes his way through life by means of monosyllables which 
he keeps contained in some hidden repository between his 
throat and stomach, where they take as much getting at as a 
woman’s purse. Of money he is no more profligate than of 
speech, buying at Martinmas one new shirt, a pair of boots, 


43 


The Tree of the Garden 

a pair of yellow corduroy trousers of the sort that have to be 
hung over the clothesline for three days before being wearable 
in the kitchen, and a cloth cap for Sundays. The rest of his 
earnings go to support a widowed mother at Peterwick Carr. 
For himself, he extracts no more than is needed to keep him in 
Rotterdam shag, which he makes go as far as any man in 
Whinsett—rolling it in his palms for so long, at times, that 
he can dispense with the smoking of it. Chiefly his recreation 
is music, which he evokes from his own tin whistle or Sudda- 
by’s accordion. Judged by his whistle, the player would appear 
to have a sprightly, jocund nature, full of pleasant quips and 
harmless pranks—though the music strikes somewhat chill to 
the stomach on winter nights, when all the keyholes are 
flautists and the oilcloth matting shivers at each blast of wind. 


2 

Four years separate the Misses Ada and Helen Suddaby. 
Ada is on the farther side of nineteen—a dark, slim girl, with 
her father’s nose and eyes and his strength of character. To 
strangers she tenders a meek enough hand, that argues her 
mild and tractable, but this effect wears off somewhat after 
treading twice with wet boots on the kitchen tiles; and even 
the Carrier, knowing the sharpness of her tongue, scrapes his 
boots demonstratively outside the door, and comes in with 
an uneasy eye above the preface of a smile—for all his forty 
years’ experience of other people’s kitchens, and three suc¬ 
cessive wives of his own, safely buried. At the time of Guy 
Openshaw’s advent, Ada Suddaby is courting with Farmer 
Barton’s son from East Whinsett, whom she says she will not 
have, and whose very name suffices to throw her into a temper. 
Their courtship presents all the external characteristics of a 
feud. Frequently the two are not on speaking terms. She is 
scornful when he comes, and angry when he stays away— 
saying he may stop away for good for aught she cares—and 
if he brings her a bag of sweetmeats from Beachington or 


44 


The Tree of the Garden 

Dimmlesea she will not deign to touch them until he is gone— 
protesting they are the sort she cannot abide—after which she 
assumes possession, and has been known to box Lartle Jessie’s 
ears for the freedom with which she has been dipping fingers 
into what does not belong to her. The swain can do nothing 
to propitiate his deity, who will only allow him to pay his 
addresses so long as she may have the pleasure of flouting 
them. Though officially rejected, he is nevertheless held to be 
responsible for her charge and entertainment on all public 
holidays, and for the due observance of Sundays, birthdays 
and feasts—not one of which services is received by Miss 
Suddaby in any other spirit than that of complete indifference 
and superiority, so that he must needs beg and pray of her 
to go to entertainments she has already set her heart on. On 
his visits to Whinsett he does not come up to the kitchen door, 
but seats himself on an inverted bucket, or on a shaft under the 
cart-shed, and waits patiently to be discovered—generally by 
Lartle Jessie, who brings word into the kitchen: “Arthur’s 
ootside.” To which her sister’s usual answer is: “Hod thy 
noise, then. Let him bide. He’s not wanted i’ kitchen. No¬ 
body asked him to come’’—albeit she has been on the lookout 
for him from the dairy window. Ultimately he is rediscovered 
and brought to the family circle by Suddaby, or George Her¬ 
bert, or Dibner, bringing a face with him that looks as if 
it had been stolen, and sitting resolutely (against all solicita¬ 
tion) on the settle end nearest the door, where he affirms he 
feels no draught and is quite warm, thank you—even in 
December, when the wind puts the doormat in convulsions,— 
and must be getting back again—which is his invariable 
formula for arrival. 

Once a month or so he is bidden to the Sunday tea, and 
does not amiss with the cheese cakes and currant loaf, though 
Ada will not sit near him, and is particularly attentive to all 
others—the more so if they be strangers of the male sex. 

Helen Suddaby, who is not yet fifteen, reflects something 
of her mother’s placidity of temper, though she does warfare 


The Tree of the Garden 45 

for her rights in the kitchen, and once a fortnight sulks for 
half a day. She thinks courtship—despite the awful example 
of it furnished by her sister, which it is plain to see she studies 
with an eye to the future—a most desirable state, and sighs 
openly to be sixteen, when she may have a young man of her 
own “ti kitchen,” and not be beholden, as now, to other folks’ 
leavings. Meanwhile she spends a vast amount of time upon 
her hair, which is blonde, and looks very attractive on an 
evening, tied up at her neck in a bow of broad pink ribbon. 

Being the baby and reputed wreckling of the family, Lartle 
Jessie enjoys immunity from many of the irksome tasks that 
fall to the lot of other young ladies of her years. She is much 
addicted to the word “Shan’t,” which does not suit her size or 
mouth or golden hair and pays too much attention to the 
orchard, where she may be seen surreptitiously balancing the 
clothes-prop and gazing up to heaven through the branches 
of the apple tree, from which a surprising number of apples 
fall daily. Of these her pockets and the bosom of her pinafore 
are usually full, and it is suspected that some of her stomach¬ 
aches are attributable to this source—which she denies, never 
having touched an apple, when charged with it, since the week 
before. Each morning she sets off to Plumpton School (not 
always without demur, and sometimes even with tears), taking 
her lunch in a basket; kicking stones to the detriment of her 
shoe-leather, and picking her way through the longest and 
wettest grass. At present she is at the absorptive age, sucking 
up much promiscuous intelligence through the capillary proc¬ 
esses of silence, and having power to diminish herself in com¬ 
pany, when advisable, to the mere function of eyes and ears. 
At school she is taught to read and write and sew and sing, 
and passes at home for no mean scholar when at night she 
makes great parade of penmanship and reading from the book, 
and will act schoolmarm and tyrant over all who will let her— 
particularly over Allison Marriot, whom she finds an admirable 
foil to her accomplishments: challenging him to write his 
name, and thrusting the book into his hands with “Thoo can’t 


46 The Tree of the Garden 

read that, Allison!”—which indeed he cannot. She shows much 
animosity towards the adjective “lartle,” which she says she has 
outgrown, and covets her sister Helen’s age and liberty, as 
Helen covets Ada’s, and Ada their eldest married sister’s, and 
so on (seemingly) through life to the final liberty of the grave, 
where there are no pots to wash and folk may stop out to 
any hour they please. In ghosts, Lartle Jessie protests her dis¬ 
belief, but as the coal-hole door lies at the foot of the back 
stair, she w T ill not go to bed before the rest—yawning her 
head off, or pestering her sisters to retire with her, or sleeping 
on the settle till their candle is lit, so locked in slumber that 
she has to be shaken to her feet, and walking up to bed with 
her eyes closed, a somnambulist in all but the faculty to make 
sure she is not the last on the stairs. Not that this deference 
to the coal-hole after dusk is exclusively her own, for the elder 
sisters Suddaby have also a proper respect for the dark, and 
as the younger of them says, very wisely, “What was young 
men made for?” They go consequently in couples to the dairy, 
cuddling the flame of the candle with a hand, as if it were 
life itself, and when a breath from the gauze ventilator threat¬ 
ens it, clutching each other’s skirts in a way that causes terror 
to both. It is strange that a little difference in the position 
of the sun should have such influence over the human mind, 
or that the dark brow of harmless night, pressed against the 
window pane, should levy such toll on mortal terrors. By 
day the Misses Suddaby will run with a mournfulness akin 
to jubilation for the rare sight of a funeral along the road; 
by night it will have such a revenge on them that the four 
walls of the kitchen form their boundary till bedtime, and 
they will sleep with their candle burning, all three packed into 
one bed, to try and create courage out of their compounded 
ingredients of alarm. 

Mrs. Suddaby comes last in the chapter, as her convenience 
does in the house. She herself has a saying that a “Mother’s 
work is never done,” and many a night will her daughters 
hurry their candle past the coal-hole door whilst she watches 


47 


The Tree of the Garden 

the oven with a fork, or sits up to tend the last moments of a 
boiling ham, or to finish a new frock for Lartle Jessie, or a 
blouse for Ada, or a hat for Helen, or a shirt for George 
Herbert or Dibner. Her labour is rarely personal. She has a 
blouse piece uncut that she bought from the travelling huckster 
last summer, and that Helen has begun to admire, testing 
it against her blushes. In the case of her daughters, work is a 
merit; with her it is a natural condition. A boy wins praise 
for swimming—not a duck. The Misses Suddaby will not 
infrequently claim exemption from one duty merely because 
they have discharged another, and will, for lack of a better 
quarrel, dispute industrial balance-sheets at the day’s end, each 
most inaccurately drawn up, as to whose domestic credit 
stands highest. But their mother is like the carrier’s mare— 
in the shafts and pulling all the time. The heavy vehicle of 
the day’s work goes lurching on; the Misses Suddaby are 
sometimes passengers, sometimes drivers, sometimes up, some¬ 
times down, now coaxers or pushers at the wheel, now lighten¬ 
ing the labour or adding to it; but their mother jogs steadily in 
harness all the while. Like Suddaby, she has known hard 
work from childhood, and it has neither spoiled nor thinned 
her. Toiling like a Trojan she has, nevertheless, acquired 
something of the corporeal endowment of a dowager, albeit 
her robe is not of silken grandeur, but of a very homely 
humility which sits her well. However menial the work she 
does—and there is not any work she will not do—no part 
of her personal nature seems demeaned by it. She is superior 
to her surroundings not by force of education, but by a some¬ 
thing rarer still, that is in and proper to herself. She is a 
woman, of course, and now and again has momentary revela¬ 
tions of her own value, telling her daughters: “Aye, my lasses! 
you’ll know about it some day, when your mother’s gone!’’— 
a prophecy that does not trouble them vastly just now, when 
life seems illimitable. They are much more concerned with 
her warning that she was once slimmer than they, and though 
professing to disbelieve it, they keep their waists under covert 


48 The Tree of the Garden 

\ 

scrutiny, and have periodic recourse to the starch box and 
vinegar cruet to ward off the predicted evil. 


Master Openshaw was not long in accommodating himself 
to the new life. He missed his mother with the poignancy 
and brevity of youth, but its soil is not deep enough, nor dunged 
with a sufficiency of experience, to bring forth lasting crops 
of sorrow. Youth’s heart, indeed, has the alacrity of its limbs: 
quick to fall and prompt at recovery. Older hearts stumble 
more rarely, but the fall is heavier. Mrs. Openshaw, return¬ 
ing home, wrote to her son without delay letters of tender 
concern whose solicitude for his happiness without her (a 
keen observer might have seen) was but a transposition of her 
own trouble. She hoped he would not miss his mother too 
much, which was her way of fearing lest he should feel her 
loss too little. 

At first, it is true, Guy Openshaw’s exotic spirit flinched 
in the unaccustomed open-air of life in which he found him¬ 
self. That was a terrible moment when Suddaby first spat 
tobacco juice into the kitchen fire, and for awhile he scarce 
dared look at the faces round him, though they showed no 
appreciable alteration when at last he raised his eyes. He 
blushed when Allison Marriot hiccoughed royally in the kitchen 
after a too hearty tea. The great boots, caked with soil, 
struck him almost with the forcefulness of bad words— 
fascinating and horrifying him at the same time. The grand 
old Holderness tongue rasped his susceptibilities as if a tiger 
licked his tender flesh. He could not reconcile “yat,” with 
“hot,” or “yam” with “home,” or “skellet” with “saucepan,” or 
“yune” with “oven,” or “flig” with “fly,” or “chaamer” with 
“bedroom”—among a hundred other daily instances—and was 
abashed when Ada Suddaby used publicly the unmentionable 
synonym for perspiration, reinforcing the word with a hand 
across her brow. For the moment, indeed, he awaited some 


49 


The Tree of the Garden 

remonstrance from her mother, though he was both relieved and 
surprised when the latter shut the oven door in silence. All 
which things made him realise Mrs. Openshaw’s wisdom in 
warning him that the world was a place of danger and tempta¬ 
tions, and that he must be ever on his guard if he would preserve 
himself against its pitfalls and grow up worthy of his father. 
He clung close to his mother’s protective skirts in spirit, and 
aspirated all his aitches as devoutly as Helen when she breathed 
extra polish on her Sunday boots, and observed his pious 
“thank-you’s” and punctilious “pleases.” His politeness was the 
pride and wonder of the kitchen, and the report of it went 
abroad. By the Misses Suddaby it was as much worshipped 
as the most precious china mantel-vase; a rare and delicate 
ornament, inspiring them to acts of secret rivalry for its en¬ 
joyment and possession. 

To Mrs. Openshaw’s son Whinsett proved an indulgent 
foster-mother, with innumerable wonders to show, and before 
the second nightfall he had taken hold of her hand. Like most 
of slender build, whose bodies are inadequate to express all 
their vital activities, he was possessed of quick affections that 
stood him in place of limbs, and his attachments were strong 
and firm as many children’s knuckles. He had been trained 
in sentiment as other boys are taught their drill; brought up 
to know only so much of life as might be loved. Moreover, 
even without this sentimental education, his was now that age 
of loyalty and illusion when the affections thrill to be em¬ 
ployed, and often for fault of a better object fasten on a worse— 
since in themselves these are no more critical than any other 
creeper, and will clasp their tendrils round the first support 
that offers them a hold. And since it is the nature of climbing 
plants to hide the blemishes in objects about which they climb, 
this overgrowth of the affections makes youth’s world look 
larger and more fair. To Guy Openshaw, Whinsett figured 
as a dwelling-place of the immensities—the rendezvous of earth 
and heaven. The breezes that blew over this spacious ledge 
of the world were vast and uncircumscribed, in no way re- 


So The Tree of the Garden 

sembling the puny winds that puffed at home, but like whole 
skies in motion. To his responsive eye Suddaby’s farm assumed 
Olympian proportions. Titanic horses lodged in its vast stables 
of twilight, passing like mountains to and from their work. 
Janus himself might have sat at the sledge-door and lost no 
dignity. The barn at midday was pierced with hundreds of 
spears and lances of sunlight. Hold your hand in the way of 
one of them and instantly the sharp shaft stabbed it, turning 
the palm to blood. From every chink and crevice the beams 
slanted, filling the place with pageantry and splendour. And 
the nature of his affections working, he came to see the Sudda- 
by family in a new and loftier light. For youth is ever youth 
in this: that it cannot both love and criticise the object loved. 
A mixed allegiance, a sort of love-keeping by double entry, is 
impossible: love has but a single wick, and must either be 
snuffed or burn. The same moment that Master Openshaw 
decided to bestow his affections on the Whinsett household, 
those singularities, first noted by a keen eye before his heart 
had assumed obligations of allegiance, were loyally and mag¬ 
ically transmuted. 

Strength showed as a commanding quality, and enjoyed 
its due recognition and reward. Biceps and triceps were dis¬ 
tinctions to be coveted, and such knowledge as counted here 
at all was of a sort he had not got. He could not milk like 
Suddaby, nor plow like Dibner, nor catch sheep by the 
fleece with a single hand like George Herbert, nor lift fabu¬ 
lous weights like Allison Marriot. Crafty natures covet, and 
simple ones admire, the qualities they do not possess. Guy 
Openshaw was quick to do the latter. He saw all the Sudda- 
bys heroic, and such faults as they had were reduced by his 
affection to mere perplexities of faith—unworthy to be enter¬ 
tained, much as his mother compromised her theological diffi¬ 
culties when they opposed reason. These things were tests 
for faith and love, whose function was never to be used, like 
the key to the Bluebeard chamber confided to Fatima. When 
Suddaby spat, and Allison Marriot hiccoughed, he perceived 


The Tree of the Garden Si 

the acts with all the reservation of a Jesuit. In others they 
might be vile: in these they had a different significance. Even 
the Holderness tongue shed its dialectal stigma and became 
the vehicle of utterance for strong men, not infrequently be¬ 
yond his comprehension. He asked the meaning of strange 
words, and was proud to note and store them in his memory; 
not necessarily for use, but mental adornment, as Mrs. Open- 
shaw would have treasured quaint shells and pebbles from 
the beach. And he began to look with a toleration approach¬ 
ing envy on the great boots that rattled over the cobbles at 
meal times, or showed their full set of gleaming teeth beneath 
the spindles of the chairs when their owners sat at meat. 
Within a fortnight he aspired to boots like Dibner’s and 
leggings like George Herbert’s, and wrote to his mother, 
begging both. 


4 

She could not bring her heart to the hobnails, as Guy 
desired, but she approved his sensibility and thoughtfulness, 
and sent him a pair of gentlemanly substitutes in footwear 
whose obvious superiority disappointed him, and a pair of 
leggings as little suggestive of horsemanship as might be— 
imploring him at the same time to be sure and keep out of 
danger, and to avoid the foldyard and wet grass. With these 
adjuncts to manliness, assisted by his own imagination, he 
strode about the farm: conceiving the boots as brave as Dib- 
ner’s, and the leggings as valiant as George Herbert’s—whose 
leathern tongues protruded through their rusty buckles with a 
ferocious and almost desperado air. 

He was proud to mix the meal for Suddaby’s pigs, and 
stir up the porridge in the battered bucket while Suddaby 
ladled the sloppy fluid from the swill-tub, and bade Master 
Openshaw have a care for his clothes. At the first rattle of 
the bucket a porcine stream arose, spreading with flame-like 
rapidity from stye to stye as if it had been a conflagration, 
until the whole foldyard was afire and ringed with lurid 


5 2 


The Tree of the Garden 

screams, and the two sows at grass raced furiously up the 
whinfield with their noses in the air, swinging their double 
row of dugs like bells, and squealing over the whole gamut 
of a bassoon; and the poultry—always quick to misinterpret 
commotion into a meal—would come running too: agile hens 
with the most unladylike abandonment of leg, and red-cheeked 
cockerels, casting dignity and chivalry to the winds, and chick¬ 
ens swept along by the current like autumn leaves in a storm; 
and aimless cackling ducks, that seemed to run without know¬ 
ing why, and that look foolish everywhere but at table and 
in the water; and great, harsh-voiced, greedy geese, too fat 
to squeeze under the foldyard gate, and too stupid to go round, 
that would push their necks through all the bars as far as the 
gizzard, one after another, with an absurd patience, and flop 
down on the grass with the despair and helplessness of lost 
children in the wake of a school treat. Then, the meal mixed 
and the bucket spilling its contents over the farmer’s boots 
in the ardour with which he bears it, they would proceed to 
all the styes in turn, Master Openshaw running in advance to 
unhasp the doors, proud of this office, and admirative of the 
farmer’s mastery of all the technics of the operation. For even 
pig-serving, as it soon appeared to the visitor, offered severer 
tests for courage and ability than the uninitiated would believe. 
The very noise alone was sufficient to deter the timorous. The 
instant Master Openshaw approached the hasp a great fierce 
snout—or a dozen little ones, as the case might be—made as if 
to prise the door off its hinges; but Suddaby strode in undis¬ 
turbed, tapping his pensioners over the nose-ends with the 
meal-stirring stick with a heartiness which (if Master Open¬ 
shaw had not viewed the farmer through his affections, rather 
than through his eyes) he might perhaps have deemed both 
cruel and unnecessary. It was, indeed, an astonishment to 
him, on their first round, to see the freedom with which the 
farmer—taking the cudgel from his catachumen’s hand—laid 
dexterously about the pigs’ noses as if he had been playing 
tip-cat, and the boy was even moved to inquire why he did so. 


The Tree of the Garden S3 

“To civilise ’em, sir,” the farmer said, which (to Guy 
Openshaw) seemed no less curious than the act it was supposed 
to explain, but in the loyal state of his affections this very 
bewilderment lent authority to the farmer’s wisdom, and he 
came in course of time to regard Suddaby as a great civilising 
force. 

Guy Openshaw loved to watch the milking. One side of 
the shed formed a calf-pen, where a mournful-eyed creature 
of red and white staggered behind a hurdle and blared for the 
maternal care, licking everything that had the likeness of a 
teat. Pressed back between the pen-gate and the meal-bin, 
Guy Openshaw awaited—at times not without a certain trepi¬ 
dation—the coming of the cows into their milking quarters. 
Before they crossed the threshold he heard the sucking of their 
hoofs in the foldyard ooze; the door darkened; the first great 
head thrust its threatening horns into the byre, and the first 
belled nostrils blew gusts of grassy breath as though scenting 
and resenting the presence of a stranger. That was the moment 
when Guy Openshaw wondered if he had the making of a 
farmer in him. But Suddaby’s voice and the pressure of other 
horns decided the first waverer. With a lunge she pitched into 
the shed, and three more followed her, dipping and rolling 
like ships at sea, each snorting in the direction of the meal-bin 
and switching into her appointed stall with as much precision 
as the Suddabys select their seats at table. There, chain- 
moored to the cribs, they foundered hugely on the clean bed¬ 
ding laid out for them; all but Poll, in the first stall, whom 
the farmer fetched smartly into milking posture with a smack 
across her flanks. There was a swallow’s nest plastered up 
against one of the rough baulks, and all the while the farmer 
milked the birds kept darting to and fro over the half-door to 
feed their brood—that pushed their yellow bills above the 
loamy border of the nest each time they caught the pulse of 
parent wings. 

The chewing of the cud and the ruttling of the big beasts 
and the clinking of their stall chains and the baby twitter 


54 


The Tree of the Garden 

of the birds mingled harmoniously with the squirt of milk 
against the pail, tilted between the farmer’s knees. At this 
task he was, indeed, extraordinarily deft and tender, and even 
Guy Openshaw marvelled at the softness with which he 
soothed his kine, and the solicitude with which he ceased milk¬ 
ing to “daff” flies from the cow’s flinching hide with his cloth 
cap—that served to wipe away the tricking perspiration from 
his own brow before going back upon his head. But should 
his patient lift a leg, or manifest too much flexibility of tail, 
he became a martinet in a moment. “If I isn’t maister o’ 
them,” he explained to Guy Openshaw, “they’ll very soon be 
maister o’ me ” Before long the masses of hot flesh warmed 
the cowshed like an oven, impregnated with the odours of 
grass-juice and fresh milk. From time to time Master Open¬ 
shaw essayed his hand at milking; took—not without a certain 
feeling of repulsion—the warm teat between his fingers and 
tried to coax a squirt of the fluid that rattled with the force 
of a cataract against the can when the farmer set his wrists in 
motion—evoking a rhythmic varying music that was sometimes 
like cymbals and sometimes like dim church bells. But the 
boyish essays met with small success. Perhaps he milked too 
hard, or more probably too light, and the cow—resenting the 
touch of strange and inexperienced fingers, held up her milk, as 
Suddaby suggested. But milking, like pig-serving, was not an 
accomplishment in the power of every boy who loved his 
mother, and Master Openshaw’s veneration grew. The last 
streaks of reluctant fluid were drawn into the frothy pail; the 
cow bidden to “stan’ ower”; the pails removed, the chains 
loosened from the cows’ necks, let fall with a jangle to the 
ground. Relieved of their gallons of that precious liquid, for 
which the weak-legged orphan bawled piteously in the adjoin¬ 
ing pen, the big beasts lurched out of their stuffy stalls, turned 
cumbrously, lowered their swaying heads and stumbled forth to 
the buttercup-starred fields once more. Suddaby, with the 
civilising rod in hand, stood aside to watch them go; and should 
one or other of the matrons pause upon the threshold, she was 


The Tree of the Garden 55 

briskly helped—with a touch across her flanks—to “remember 
her manners,” as the farmer phrased it. 

But at least, if the Whinsett rule was strict, it was admin¬ 
istered by a pedagogue of undoubted erudition. To Guy 
Openshaw, breathless and eager, striding two steps and run¬ 
ning three in a manful attempt to keep abreast of his mentor 
as they moved about the farm, Suddaby seemed the incarnation 
of all wisdom; his local history huge; his grasp of facts enor¬ 
mous. The name of every bird was known to him, from the 
great brown “muck-bird” coasting overhead, to the busy white¬ 
cheeked Billie-biter, or the voluble Peggy-whitethroat (own 
cousin to the nightingale), chattering in the hawthorn hedge; 
the name of every grass and weed and hedge-side flower, from 
cockfoot and timothy to fat-hen and crake-needles and the yel¬ 
low runch. Suddaby it was who showed Master Openshaw 
the old-time fashion of playing fiddle with the figwort, and 
gave him his first lessons in hedge-lore and the mysteries of 
banking, dyking, and draining. Not all the farmer’s familiar¬ 
ity with the facts of life had blunted his zest for it, or weakened 
his interest in the things that were his daily portion. He was 
as keen to detect a rare bird or distinguish it by note as he was 
to be up betimes with fork and spade, and his power of vision 
amazed Guy Openshaw. Suddaby could see and name figures 
at work on the far Fothom lands, where Master Openshaw, 
shielding his eyes with both hands from the sun’s violence, was 
able to discern nothing beyond the bafflement of his own tears. 
For every field, as they passed it, Suddaby had a history and a 
name; could record what it was laid down with in old Joe 
Medcalf’s days, or what crop they were cutting when this or 
that took place; and who was at work in it. He knew all the 
hidden red drain-pipes as intimately as a surgeon knows the 
veins and arteries, and could have furnished a calendar of the 
district for fifty years back with a little thought, for nothing 
escaped his observation, or, once observed, his memory. 

All of which passed into Master Openshaw’s nature, along 
with other experiences of the new life, and helped—we must 


56 The Tree of the Garden 

believe—to mould and make him, since in the economy of nature 
nothing is ever lost. Some of man’s experience passes into his 
character like seed, to bring forth a crop of actions good and 
bad; other experience goes in as dung to the first, corruptible 
knowledge whose function is to form a compost for the mind. 
Not anything in life is altogether vile, and nature knows no 
line between impure and pure. Men only strain to higher 
things by knowledge of their baser substance, and even the 
spiritual lilies of the soul must have a soil. 


5 

For Dibner, too, Guy Openshaw conceived an admiration, 
of a quality more personal and stimulative, by reason of their 
closer ages. Human virtues of the most transcendant kind, 
displayed in one whose years are too remote from the spectator, 
are like monuments in a distant land, that excite wonder, but 
no emulation. Guy Openshaw venerated Suddaby’s wisdom, 
but he coveted Dibner’s boots. All that Dibner was, and all 
that Dibner had, and all that Dibner did, entered disturbingly 
within the practical radius of his own ambition. George Her¬ 
bert’s strength, though mutely worshipped, was a decade away. 
Dibner’s qualities and Dibner’s reputed privileges were but at 
a distance of two years; remote enough to catch enchantment, 
not too distant to encourage hope,—and Master Openshaw re¬ 
garded the farmer’s youngest son as a model not unworthy to 
be followed. Dibner supplemented braces with a leathern belt, 
which he hitched at times in coming to the kitchen for a meal, 
with a fine air of independence. He wore velveteen corduroy 
breeches, with leggings to match—w T hich caused Master Open¬ 
shaw to feel covert shame of his own unmanly knickerbockers 
—and a lump in Dibner’s left-hand pocket showed where the 
big bone-hafted clasp-knife had its home, whose blade he spent 
hours in whetting on the troughstone, whereby the troughstone 
was worn into a channel, and Dibner’s knife could cut slices 
off a sheet of paper held out vertically at arm’s length in 


57 


The Tree of the Garden 

the air. When he whittled wood, the white chips fell softly 
and noiselessly from his blade like snowflakes. Cutting, with 
such an implement, was no longer a dull and menial labour, but 
an aesthetic delight. Dibner would sit about the farm, when 
work was done and whittle for the sheer joy of sensing that 
perfect instrument beneath his hand, until the thing he shaped 
was cut down to his finger-ends and relinquished, or the blade 
grew dull, when he would at once repair to the trough (ac¬ 
companied by Master Openshaw) and coax back that fine, 
subtle, sensitive edge of steel—that precious quality in knives 
corresponding to soul in woman or wit in man. 

Or, if it was not the knife, then it was that even grimmer 
and grander thing—the gun—that Dibner took upon his knee 
and oiled and fittled while Master Openshaw sat at such a 
distance as paid respect to his mother’s memory and yet did 
no wrong to his own courage. Truth to tell, it was a noble 
gun—for all it needed to be fed by hand out of a brass powder- 
flask, like a baby from the bottle. It had the roar of a profane 
drill-sergeant, and kicked like a horse. With the stock under 
his arm and the long-nosed melancholy-looking barrel touch¬ 
ing the grass, Dibner would wander off after tea, along the 
hedges, where the trail became at times so hot as to oblige 
him to follow it on all fours; and always the gun spoke— 
whether in pointed allusion to some quarry, real or suspected, 
or “just ti see how she gans, efter fittling,” as Dibner put it. 
He could not oil the lock but he must go out and discharge 
the weapon, and in proportion as she kicked and caused a 
noise, he decided she went “grand,” and made sure he could 
hit something now, given the chance. 

One day Dibner proffered him the gun. The unexpected 
proposal roused in Master Openshaw’s emotions the same 
flutter that the gunshot itself would have effected in the world 
of fur and feathers. Pride was stirred, and fears started, and 
doubts set on the wing. He wished to be the man, yet the 
man was but a boy, who stood in awe of this violent and 
murderous weapon, worshipped, and was in turn made keener 


58 The Tree of the Garden 

by the very knowledge of his fears, to pluck up courage to 
subdue them. He shaped his lips to say “No,” but of a sudden 
the gun was in his hands—a thing as hard as the human 
heart, as heavy as a conscience; inert, like virtue, and sinister 
and sinful to the touch. The cocked hammer over the copper 
cap had the semblance of a satanic eyebrow, diabolically lifted; 
the cap shone like a red eye-glint; he could have cast the thing 
from him and run. But the passion of the chase was in the air, 
and by a strange metamorphosis the cocked hammer and Dib- 
ner’s eyebrow became as one. The very devil had him. His 
feet acquired a dreadful stealth; his lips pursed murderously 
to the likeness of the guns’ own mouth; his eyes grew cunning 
and crafty; he had the thirst to exercise the god-like in him 
and slay. For if men cannot create, at least they can destroy, 
and the taking of life seems almost as much to manifest their 
divinity as the making of it. The son of Mrs. Openshaw 
levered up the big brown barrel; the bead-like sight traced 
circles before his unsteady eyes; all his being trembled on the 
verge of that awful explosion, as before a precipice. Dibner 
cried: “Look sharp! you’ll miss ’em!” 

His voice, more than Master Openshaw’s finger, discharged 
the gun. A terrific report ensued. He staggered, stupefied, 
before this gigantic genie of the gun, so violently liberated, 
and thought for a moment he must be surely killed. His 
aim had not failed; he had not faltered. O! how brave he 
was. He had taken a life: he was a conqueror and a man. 

And then he saw his trophy, the panting thing his skill and 
courage had destroyed: a quivering bundle of feathers with 
beak all bloody, and sightless of an eye, and broken of a wing, 
that gasped on Dibner’s palm, and the exultation died out of 
him like the last ray of sunlight on a wall. The gun, dis¬ 
charged, was as a passion sated. What a disparity between 
the magnificence of the explosion and its wretched consequence; 
between the blustering implement of wood and iron and this 
little life pulsing out to its finish, far beyond the reach of his 
help or the consolation of his pity. What justification was 


59 


The Tree of the Garden 

there for a deed so wanton and so ruthless? O! could his 
mother ever have believed that her son should practise dis¬ 
obedience in any way so vile as this! She who had taught 
him love and pity and sympathy for all things weak and dumb! 

With this act of disobedience and its fruit, something of the 
virginity of Master Openshaw’s mind was gone. For awhile he 
walked the earth like Adam, with the taste of the bitter apple 
of experience in his mouth, and, like Cain, bearing a brand on 
his brow. But disobedience is, after all, a great teacher, with¬ 
out whose aid mankind would never grow. And at least, hav¬ 
ing vindicated the god-like in him, he never touched or fired 
Dibner’s gun again. 


6 

Letters and parcels from Mrs. Openshaw brought the post¬ 
man much to Whinsett. Daily, indeed, the shadow of his head 
fell across the kitchen window, and even in advance of it the 
Misses Suddaby’s sharp ears detected the sound of his dragging 
footstep and the jingling buckles of his flabby bag. 

Dutifully, twice a week, Master Openshaw secluded himself 
in the best parlour to compose the promised letter home, seated 
before a writing-case of crocodile leather, replete with every 
requisite for correspondence—from gilt-edged cards and sta¬ 
tionery to variegated wafers and two sticks of fancy sealing- 
wax. His pen was of ivory, intricately carved to represent 
a folded umbrella, and painful to handle—impressing patterns 
on the thumb and fingers—but furnished with a microscopic 
crystal in its waist, through which, by putting a hand over the 
left eye, he could perceive six magnified views of Brighton 
with the right, and thus refresh his mind with distant scenery 
when barren of ideas or exhausted with the task of punctu¬ 
ation. 

Through the juvenile stiffness of his prose the exuberance 
of his love for Whinsett showed, and cost his mother not a 
few stray sighs, who was ever jealous of the Whinsett kitchen. 
Now, his letter told her, he had been helping Helen to churn 


6o 


The Tree of the Garden 

in the dairy, until (above the creaking of the handle and the 
swill of buttermilk) they heard at last the welcome butter 
belabouring the tub’s ribs; and there was no sputter when they 
pulled out the spile-peg, or tell-tale cream adhering to it. At 
another time he had been hoeing turnips with Suddaby; or 
helping among fly-blown sheep; or holding the foot-rot bottle 
while George Herbert pared, and Dibner with a feather ap¬ 
plied the lotion to the bleeding hoofs; or putting his fingers 
to his ears while Suddaby and George Herbert and Allison 
Marriot and Arthur Barton ringed a litter of screaming pigs 
after tea. George Herbert took him one evening in his new 
leggings across the fields to Hallum, where he had milk and 
spice bread in the flagged kitchen of a little thatched cottage 
standing under some deep and glorious trees, with a horse-shoe 
pond across the road, sky-blue by reflection, and white beneath 
the floating bodies of ducks and geese—that lay so lightly on 
the water it seemed a breath could puff them to either bank; 
close beside a vast cart-shed, where bright, red-spoked wagons 
showed through a colonnade of brick pillars and interminable 
long stables, from which the horses were heard rattling their 
head-stalls, and striking the cobbles great blows with their 
massive feet. 

With the butter in its drab-painted box beneath the 
seat, the boy drove by Mrs. Suddaby’s side to Beachington, 
and saw at close quarters the grey church on its walled hillock, 
whose gilded vane and bleached finials peep above the Fothom 
lands, and are visible from the Whinsett windows; and passed 
the black Beachington windmill with the white cowl so close 
that he heard the mighty sweeping of its luffered sails, like the 
wing-beats of gulls when they fly low overhead. On two 
successive Sundays the farmer took the boy to Spraith, along 
with his three daughters and a basket filled to its slotted cloth 
with ham-cake, cruds, boiled eggs, chizzucks, bee drink, cold 
tea, rock semper and spiced bread. Fain would we linger 
here and let memory sentimentalise over this cherished spot, 
for Master Openshaw dedicated two whole epistles of curious 


The Tree of the Garden 61 

detail to the subject, written with so rapt a pen and with such 
obvious love of all things described, that his mother’s heart 
pined at the evidence of a happiness so independent of her 
own—but it cannot be done short of a chapter, and our history 
is under marching orders, and the muse must move. 

With Dibner Guy walked to Sunfleet and to Plumpton— 
where he made friends with the blacksmith and his wife, and 
played bull-ring in the smiddy, and blew the snoring forge, 
and smote heroic ineffectual blows on white-hot metal with the 
smith’s hammer. Even to Dimmlesea he was taken on Sat¬ 
urday evenings to hear the Pierrots—travelling eight in the 
spring cart, all packed so tight that to the eye of a spectator 
they appeared to be standing up. And though he strove assid¬ 
uously after truth and did not fear the speaking of it, these 
letters that cover nearly the whole of his Whinsett doings fall 
short in two notable respects. They make no reference to Dib- 
ner’s gun or Hardrip’s lass. 


7 


There are two Whinsetts: Whinsett East and Whinsett 
West, or Whinsett Magna and Whinsett Parva—as the places 
figured in the Book of Dooms, with their carucates and ox- 
gangs, when Norman William dug his bloody spurs of con¬ 
quest into our country all those hundreds of years ago. By 
the transmutations of time the humble has been exalted and 
the mighty brought low. Whinsett Magna is now become 
Whinsett Parva—for the most part of it lies bleaching be¬ 
neath the waters of the North Sea, with many Saxon, Danish, 
and Norman bones,—and all that remains of its once consid¬ 
erable extent is a bunch of dim red farms and cottages that 
cluster disconsolately about a decapitated road, barred by a 
single and very rotten rail since the brewer’s traveller drove 
over it one dark and drunken night, and became spirit like his 
own samples. The rail is still pointed out as the site of this 
melancholy accident, but time and the restless waters have 


62 


The Tree of the Garden 

done much work in collaboration since then, and the true place 
of the traveller’s fall lies some fifty yards further to sea in a 
spot that is now pure heaven, and gains a yard or more of 
remoteness each year, according to weather and tides. Suddaby 
himself served a harvest in his younger days at a farm of fifty 
acres that are now become pasture for sea cattle, and a bed 
for tritons and mermaids; and Allison Marriot’s grandfather— 
who wore a puckered smock to the end of his days, and spilled 
snuff from a papier mache box all down the front of it 
(as Suddaby could remember)—was born in a rough-cast cot¬ 
tage hard by the Whinsett church, of which the only remain¬ 
ing traces are a gargoyle or two and some crocketed stones 
that decorate gardens in the district, and serve as a trailing 
ground for mother-of-thousands. The rest of the church and 
the dead that slept about it are wrapped deep beneath the 
encroaching sea. Now and again at some exceptionally low 
equinoctial tide the quilt of waters is withdrawn, and a weedy 
stone or two uncovered like the limbs of a sleeper—but the 
occurrence is rare, and the Dimmlesea photographer has twice 
missed it. Allison Marriot’s ancestors, who were plain dry¬ 
land folk and trod nothing much deeper than a furrow, will 
have to rise at the resurrection through fathoms of ocean like 
the veriest mariners. Such are the ironies of fate. 

The weathered dwellings left to mourn these changes, them¬ 
selves threatened, and standing close by the brink of the grave 
like old people gathered round some lowered coffin, whose 
eyes seem but to see themselves and to weep their own end 
in that of another, are reduced to a handful. Indeed—to¬ 
gether with the scattered farms of West Whinsett—they 
scarcely more than half fill, with the printer’s aid, the smeared 
assessment sheet that flutters on Shorthorn’s barn-end, along 
with swine fever notices and summaries of Sheep-dipping Acts 
and the Protection of Wild Birds. The Plumpton blacksmith 
had an auxiliary forge here, not three fields distant from Sudda- 
by’s farm, at the junction of the High Road with the Little 
Whinsett laneway. In harvest time legend accredited him 


The Tree of the Garden 63 

with a visit every Monday morning, but, like most legends, 
it had but slender roots of fact, and Suddaby, at least, was 
among those who expected the Plumpton blacksmith in Whin- 
sett any time after the smoke rose from his chimney and the 
clink of his hammer, etherealised by distance and blue sky, 
floated across the intervening hedgerows with the purity of 
bird-music. Twice this smoke crept skyward in a silken thread, 
and the bell-like tinkle came to Whinsett, during Guy Open- 
shaw’s visit; and twice, drawn by these seductive tokens, the 
boy spent a morning at the forge, wrapped in the intoxicating 
reek of burning hoofs—that stung his eyes to blindness and 
his lungs to suffocation, so that he had need to dash into the 
open air for breath, fanning from his face with both hands 
the acrid clouds inhaled by the blacksmith’s leathern lungs 
without a qualm. At first the blacksmith’s torvous countenance 
and terse diction had disconcerted and a little awed the boy, 
when Dibner introduced him to the Plumpton forge and the 
smith turned eyes of microscopic scrutiny upon him. Perhaps 
the blacksmith’s gaze had held some visible dilution of con¬ 
tempt in it for pampered youth on the occasion of their first 
encounter. But whatever prejudice he might profess to en¬ 
tertain against young gentlemen of Master Openshaw’s up¬ 
bringing, he was quickly mollified by the boy’s irreproachable 
politeness and the warmth and promptitude of his affections. 
Nor did it take Guy Openshaw longer to divine the reciprocal 
warmth that glowed behind the blacksmith’s shaggy chest. 
Straightway he placed him on Olympus, along with Suddaby 
and his sons, and coveted no greater distinction than to be 
allowed to serve this son of Vulcan in any menial capacity. 
Conversation never flagged between the two, or, if it did, their 
silence acknowledged no constraint. The smith would turn 
his irons in the fire, and Guy would blow the cinders to white 
heat, and the fire would be the living link of their companion¬ 
ship—alike a language and a heart. 

Being the son of his mother and a young gentleman of 
means, Master Openshaw was admitted an honorary graduate 


64 The Tree of the Garden 

of the smithy and made free of the bullring and the bellows’ 
handle without the customary painful matriculation. 

And here, in the diminutive forge at Whinsett Magna (that 
differed only from Whinsett Parva by the breadth of three 
fields and its own inferior size, as we have already noted), 
Guy Openshaw set conscious eyes for the first time on the 
figure of the same dark and dirty-looking girl whom his mother 
(all unseeing) had passed, recumbent in the roadside grasses, 
tenting cows, on the evening of her sorrowful return to 
Dimmlesea. Part lit by the strong sunlight without, and part 
reflecting the gleam from the smith’s forge, that communicated 
its lurid animation to otherwise sullen eyes, she peeped in at 
the door with a curious admixture of shrinking timidity and 
defiant courage. The first quality was noticeable in a shy 
screening of her ragged body behind the doorpost; the latter 
showed in the unwavering stedfastness of her dark eyes, that 
attached themselves tenaciously to what they sought to see, as a 
dog lays hold of a bone—fearing dispossession all the while, 
yet undeterred by the challenge of other eyes. Her own eyes 
were fringed so thickly with black lashes as to seem almost 
dirty—which, in truth, perhaps they were—for her person 
displayed no niceties to the fastidious gaze. Her dark hair, 
clogged and matted with its wealth of natural oil, and dead¬ 
ened with the dust of earth and the pollen from ripe grasses, 
fell in unkempt locks about her brow and ears. Her coarse 
stockings, gartered with hemp twine below the knee, passed 
into gaping boots too big for her, dry of leather and destitute 
of blacking. Dust and chaff lay heavy on her sunburnt frock. 
To such sparing and embarrassed glances as Guy Openshaw 
bestowed on her she showed as unattractive as a tattered 
mawkin, set up in the young wheat to frighten crows; and 
yet, in the very wildness of this wayside weed there lurked a 
beauty only waiting to be born. Lost in the tangle of her own 
disorder, displaying alike the fear and confidence of all wild 
nature, there was something about this untidy creature that 
dirt and rags alone could not subdue, that escaped and trans* 


The Tree of the Garden 65 

cended these as the perfume does the flower; flowing out from 
her with every look openly directed or warily withheld behind 
the thicket of her lashes. Sex, as yet unformulated and sub¬ 
conscious, hovered about the girl’s rude being like a sentence 
over hesitating and uncertain lips. Once its informing spirit 
touched the members of her body with understanding and 
purpose, then beauty would assuredly be born. But, thanks 
to his mother’s guardianship, sex for Guy Openshaw meant 
nothing more specific than a difference of raiment; he dis¬ 
tinguished male from female solely by the clothes they wore, 
and would have been shocked and not a little baffled by the 
nude. Therefore he saw no deeper than the girl’s rags, and, 
having seen, quickly removed his eyes from so unclean a 
resting place—the more precipitately by reason of the thick- 
lashed eyes that looked back at them with a singular intensity. 
Perhaps the blacksmith’s sixty years, and their accompanying 
intimacy with sex in all its procreative exercise in a land 
where men’s prosperity so largely depends on it, had imparted 
to him a quicker eye for the assessment of embryonic beauty, 
for he cast a second glance at the slatternly figure in the door¬ 
way (he was shaping shoes out of bar-iron for subsequent 
usage—Master Openshaw working the bellows) and asked: 

“What’s thy name, lass?”—bedding up the shoe with embers 
and speaking casually as if, at heart, he took no interest in 
the question asked. The girl’s thick lashes straightway came 
together, making a screen from observation for her eyes, but 
this was the only sign vouchsafed that the blacksmith’s words 
had reached her. “Thoo’s gotten a tongue i’ thy head?” the 
smith remarked after a moment, in a sharper tone. “Thoo can 
speak when thoo’s spoke to, what?” A low voice, emerging 
from the girl’s averted lips that scarcely moved, uttered the 
one word: “Thosday.” 

“Thosday?” said the blacksmith, letting his keen eye travel 
curiously over the girl’s person. “Nay! I didn’t ask thee 
day o’ week. And if I had a’ done, thoo’s gi’en me wrong 
answer. I asked thee thy name, lass.” 


66 


The Tree of the Garden 

Again the lips unsealed themselves sufficiently to give outlet 
to the same word, and this time a gleam of enlightenment 
quickened the blacksmith’s face. 

“Then thoo’ll be aud Hardrip’s bairn, I lay!” he said. “Isn’t 
thoo?” 

The lips responded “Aye,” and the blacksmith’s pincers 
plunged the shoe deeper into the heat of the fire. 

“I thought thoo was,” he said; and, more to himself than 
to her or to Master Openshaw, added the reflection: “A 
drunken aud cuddy he is an’ all.” 

“Diz thoo ever think ti wash thysen?” he enquired of the 
ragged figure after awhile, in which Master Openshaw worked 
the bellows and the smith raked the cinders without paying 
further heed to the spectator by the door, “. . . and comb thy 
hair?” Once more the thick lashes, that had come apart in 
the interval to give the girl’s gaze a better access to Master 
Openshaw’s conspicuously clean face drew defensively together, 
and more of the girl’s body took shelter behind the brickwork. 
But, as though animated by the memory of the blacksmith’s 
last rebuke, she answered with a sullen promptitude: 

“Aye!” 

“Thoo diz?” the smith exclaimed with an air of astonish¬ 
ment; and the shoe being now hot enough, drew its quivering 
body from the fire and set to work upon it. No further words 
were exchanged with the doorway, and when the blacksmith 
plunged at last the deadened shoe into the hissing pail of water 
by the forge, the figure of their self-invited onlooker had 
vanished. 


8 

Up to this moment the characters of old George Hardrip 
and his lass had been known to Master Openshaw by hearsay 
only, chiefly as themes of infrequent conversation in the Sud- 
daby kitchen. He knew that drink had reduced this one-time 
prosperous farmer from a holding of four hundred acres to 
three fields and a thatched cottage on the Whinsett Road, 


The Tree of the Garden 67 

where two lean cows rasped the sparse herbage with their 
listless tongues, and a bony horse—sometimes in extreme cold 
weather tied up in a piece of sacking—turned its croup dis¬ 
consolately to the hedge, and sought vain shelter for its starved 
ribs from the east wind. He knew that old Hardrip was 
rarely sober on Saturdays after selling the dairy produce in 
Dimmlesea, and that the girl had frequently to take the reins 
in driving home. And he knew she made up butter with 
dirty fingers, and did not scald the churn, so that the Misses 
Suddaby would not, for anything in the world, touch that, or 
her bread, but pulled wry and repugnant faces at the bare 
idea. Also the kitchen grate was not black-leaded, nor the 
cottage curtains changed for weeks together. 

But following this brief encounter with old Hardrip’s lass at 
the Whinsett forge, Guy Openshaw began to see her fre¬ 
quently about the dark thatched cottage that was her home, 
or trudging up the lane behind the two disconsolate, dilapi¬ 
dated cows; or hobbling to the tumbledown pig-stye at the 
rear of the house, balancing the brimming swill-pail with 
extended arm, girt about with an old meal-sack in lieu of an 
apron, and trailing her bootlaces in the dust. Old Hardrip, 
too, came now to be revealed to him—a rheumy, corpulent 
old man, with a fleshy nose broadening to its extremity like a 
flageolet, and red and granulated pouches under each dull 
eye that filled perpetually with fluid and had to be shaken 
aside every few minutes or dashed with his knuckles as he 
walked. No greeting ever passed between him and the son 
of Mrs. Openshaw, who rather shirked this shambling monu¬ 
ment of inebriety, and hastily withdrew his eyes from the 
grudging look the farmer cast upon them. But now, as if 
destiny all this while had been alone concerned with the 
preparation of her formula, careful to delay its compounding 
until every chosen ingredient should be to hand—Guy Open¬ 
shaw was to enrich his Whinsett memories with a personal 
experience of old Hardrip and the dark-eyed lass, and take his 
part in an episode of deepest influence on after-life. 


68 


The Tree of the Garden 

It was a Saturday evening. Arthur Barton and Ada Sud- 
daby had bicycled to Dimmlesea, where, after listening to the 
Peirrots, they were pledged to bring back a basketful of fried 
fish and potato chips from the reeking shop in Parade Street, 
for the regalement of the Suddaby supper table—Saturday’s 
supper ever being a late meal at Whinsett. Helen Suddaby, 
with her blonde hair brightly beribboned and her fresh face 
as clean as soap and rain-water could make it, languished 
in her best frock and sighed attendance on the young man she 
meant to have next year at this time, inquiring pathetically: 
“What else was Saturdays made for? Lawks! I’d as lieve it 
was Sunday.” Lartle Jessie, taking advantage of a lapse of 
vigilance on the part of Whinsett eyes, delivered frontal 
attacks on the orchard apple-trees, which she charged like a 
lancer with couched clothes-prop, dodging the fruit that fell 
about her head. Mrs. Suddaby, to whom no days or festivals 
brought any respite, tended the oven with a fork and stirred 
simmering saucepans over the kitchen fire, before which (his 
back to the broad window) Suddaby sat in his Saturday-night 
posture with one leg thrown over the arm of his ashwood 
chair and devoured the well-thumbed penny number of a 
boy’s adventure book, held spellbound by the mysteries of 
some dense African jungle portrayed for him by a denizen 
of Grub Street, who in all likelihood knew no jungle more 
remote than his own life and its financial darkness, nor any 
perils more foreign than the public house. Allison Marriot, 
uncompanioned, with his thumbs in his braces, sat propping 
the barn end and staring at the sun-flushed sky with the 
unseeing gaze of one recovering from a fit. George Herbert 
had stridden down the pasture on his way to Hallum. The 
spirit of peace folded her broad wings over the countryside 
and gathered all these scattered hamlets, all these sounds 
and sights and fragrances into one serene and concentrated 
bosom. 

Dibner, at first cherishing secret thoughts of “going a- 
lassing,” as the sport is designated in the country, had walked 


The Tree of the Garden 69 

with Master Openshaw along the cliff to Plumpton. But 
lasses proving scarce and somewhat weak on the wing, he 
resolved to defer this exhilarating exercise until the morrow, 
at chapel-leaving time, when, in company with half a dozen 
stout fellows of his own age, each drawing confidence from 
the stockpot of a common courage, they would exchange rep¬ 
artee with such lasses as encouraged it, and even pursue their 
screaming quarries, six abreast, at a distance of twenty yards 
or more, up and down the dusty laneway between Plumpton 
and the sea until supper time. As a substitute for this diversion 
he repaired to the blacksmith’s shop, stimulated at close quar¬ 
ters by the shouts of laughter proclaiming a jovial company 
within, and he and Master Openshaw spent a pleasant hour 
at “bullring.” 

Cheered with more bullring in the smiddy, Master Open¬ 
shaw and his companion were walking back to Whinsett by 
the road in the serene clear evening light, not yet divested 
of the last golden splendour of the sun, when the one-time 
farmer of four hundred acres overtook them, driving home 
from Dimmlesea, and, as fate would have it, old Hardrip 
was gorgeously drunk. Long before the shambling equipage 
on which he sat came into sight, between the lofty solid elms 
that overhung the Plumpton hill, they heard a great shouting 
from over their shoulders, as if voices hailed them, and Master 
Openshaw said: “What’s that?”—thinking, perhaps, it might 
have been the blacksmith and attendants calling after them 
from the hilltop, for some reason or other. Dibner, better 
versed in this particular species of commotion, and its cause, 
showed small curiosity. “Yon’s nobbut aud Hardrip,” he 
replied, “coming yam wi’ lass i’ cart. Aud chap’s fresh an’ 
all, judging by sound of him.” 

At the same moment the crazy cart with the vociferous 
figure surmounting it rocked into sight on its unsteady wheels. 
Awed by the clamour and fascinated by a spectacle so debased 
and unfamiliar, Guy Openshaw stood stock still, against the 
dictates of good manners, to watch the noisy vehicle go by. 


70 


The Tree of the Garden 

Obstinately rententive of the reins, albeit incapable of using 
them, the farmer rolled hugely and precariously on his broad 
base, like a barrel on its bilge; his mouth hung stupidly agape, 
and from the pendent lower lip saliva (or it might be beer) 
dripped disgustingly upon his vest, but from time to time he 
ejected through this drunken orifice a tremendous voice, like 
six ordinary voices rolled in one, that reverberated in space and 
seemed to sprawl there as helpless as did his own intoxicated 
body on the oscillating cart. By his side, nursing a basket on 
her lap, and gazing forward with a face devoid of all expres¬ 
sion, as though indifferent to the old man’s state, and oblivious 
of the revilement that his reeling mouth roared at her, sat 
the girl whose face Guy Openshaw had first seen reflecting the 
gleams of the blacksmith’s fire. She wore the same dirty cloth 
cap upon her tangled head, and the same sunburnt brown frock; 
and her eyes displayed the same look of shy and obstinate curi¬ 
osity in Guy Openshaw’’s direction as the cart drew nearer. 
Nothing of shame showed upon her countenance for the situation 
in which he saw her, or the profane charges of which she bore 
the brunt. It seemed, indeed, she had been as well trained to 
endure abuse in public as Master Openshaw to bear his moth¬ 
er’s kisses. The horse, flagging of head and trailing of feet, 
shogged onward in a cloud of slowly mounting dust, yoked in an 
ancient harness ot cracked leather and frayed rope to an un¬ 
washed and creaking cart that rolled unevenly as if its wheels 
had been ellipses, and being much too small for the quadruped 
that pulled it, inclined at a dangerous angle from the horizontal 
for inebriety and girlhood. Both occupants sat on its upreared 
brow, with their legs dangling over opposite shafts; now and 
again, as Hardrip belched his purple imprecations, his bulk 
lurched over to the girl until his abusive mouth was within an 
inch of hers, and for a while it seemed inevitable the momentum 
must carry him into her lap. The next moment saw him as vio¬ 
lently deflected to the other side, so that Master Openshaw be¬ 
lieved this time he must be gone for good, and clenched his fists 
to endure the spectacle of the farmer’s fall. For fear and very 


71 


The Tree of the Garden 

shame to participate in a shame of which the lass looked all 
unconscious, he turned his face away from the cart as it went 
by, making pretence to find some object of keen interest in the 
hedge. The farmer, whose drunken wrath despised all secrecy, 
bellowed out his inarticulate charges to the two pedestrians in 
passing, as though invoking their testimony to the justice of 
them. Drink and dialect and Master Openshaw’s own inno¬ 
cence conspired to render much of what old Hardrip uttered 
unintelligible to the boy, but here and there were words of 
emphasis so terrible as to strike awe in the listener’s heart. The 
cart rolled by, and Guy Openshaw had begun to draw an easier 
and purer breath, when all of a sudden—with such rapidity 
that neither he nor Dibner rightly understood the mechanism 
of it—a dreadful act took place. They saw the girl turn her 
head, as if to take a final look at the witnesses of her degrada¬ 
tion. Almost simultaneously old Hardrip’s fist rose up into 
the air—a threatening lump against the sky. The next moment 
it fell upon the girl’s face, either through drunken impotence 
or design, and in a flash her place was empty. She lay prone in 
the roadway dust amid the scattered contents of her basket, the 
lunging wheel passed over her frock and the cart went by. Old 
Hardrip, still rolling on his base and roaring words out of his 
incontinent mouth, cast not so much as a look behind, but drove 
on. It seemed he had not realised the consummation of his 
drunken deed, or missed as yet the girl from his side. Staring 
through the inward eye of inebriety into a wholly imaginary 
world of grievances and wrongs, perhaps to him she showed 
still seated by his elbow, a phantasm of provocation and re¬ 
proach ; for still he seemed to threaten the space her ragged 
person once had filled, and denounced the emptiness that super¬ 
seded her. 


9 

White to the lips with indignation and horror, and trembling 
in all his limbs, Guy Openshaw stood rooted to the spot whence 
he had witnessed this prodigious deed. For a while the strange 


72 


The Tree of the Garden 

inertness of the figure in the roadway, lying so flat and ribbon¬ 
like and shapeless, destroyed all thought of motion. He had 
heard and read of Death, and knew him terrible by repute, and 
all at once these inert rags assumed a dreadfulness as if they 
had been the tyrant’s mantle. Dibner, albeit betraying less 
facial concern, showed scarce more alacrity to render aid, and 
it was not until the prone garments gave reassurance of life 
within them and, unassisted, rose all dusty from the roadway, 
that either of the hushed spectators of this sordid drama found 
courage to advance from where they stood. Dibner, with 
characteristic complacency, remarked: “Lass dizzn’t ail a deal. 
Wheel missed her.” And being thus satisfied of the girl’s 
safety in his own mind, appeared disposed to seek no further 
assurance of it from her. Guy Openshaw, though not less 
reluctant to mix himself in such a matter, had—for his dis¬ 
comfort—higher obligations of politeness and humanity to con¬ 
sider, and approached the girl to ask, in a voice that still shook 
beneath the strain of recent emotion, if she were hurt. She 
answered, without looking at him: “Not a deal.” Her voice 
betrayed less trouble than his own. From head to foot all one 
side of the girl’s figure was whitened with the fine, dry dust, 
so that when first she rose to her feet it was as if the half of 
her were in sunlight. The dust lay thick upon her face and 
hair and lashes, and through this fine and floury coating a crim¬ 
son patch grew steadily on her cheek-bone, like a carnation. 
She daffed the dust and the wheel-mark from her skirt with 
a careless hand, and part wiped, part spat, the dust that clogged 
her lips. By this time the blood from her cheek had trickled 
a tortuous course as far as her chin, and a red drop of it splashed 
upon her knuckles. It was her first intimation of the hurt. 
She licked the drop from her hand, and smeared her cheek with 
a dusty palm in quest of the wound, magnifying the bloody area 
and making her face formidable, after which she stared soul- 
lessly at the gory fingers and daubed the trickling injury anew. 

One older than Guy Openshaw, matured in wisdom and 
ripened in feeling, might have looked upon the girl’s soiled and 


73 


The Tree of the Garden 

bleeding figure with compassion. No plaint escaped her; her 
attitude of resignation bespoke a life unused to any tender 
tribunal of pity; the futility of tears was long since incorpo¬ 
rated with her experience, for childhood only weeps so long 
as weeping has rewards. Without bestowing more attention 
on herself she set to work to gather up the meagre packages of 
grocery spilled in her fall; lumps of sugar and broken candles; 
now and again drawing hasty knuckles across her oozing cheek. 
The wheel had passed over a bag of rice and burst it, but she 
sought to save as much as possible from waste, scooping it up 
in her two hands, and even picking single scattered seeds for 
replacement in the torn blue bag, along with grains of dust 
and bits of straw and blood from her own fingers. Silently 
Guy Openshaw viewed the occupation for awhile. Two forces 
were at war within him—the forces of his worse and better 
natures. He envied Dibner the fine detachment with which 
this brave fellow stood apart, as one uncompromised and free, 
owning obligation neither to politeness nor humanity. There 
was something manly and superior in the older boy’s attitude 
that spoke powerfully to Guy Openshaw’s inferior nature, and 
when—casting an uneasy eye in Dibner’s direction, as though 
seeking counsel in perplexity—he saw his hero of the gun and 
leggings make a quick, emphatic signal with his hand, Guy 
Openshaw almost responded to the invocation and left old 
Hardrip’s lass to her own devices amidst the burst bags and 
spilled groceries. But something more potent than his inclina¬ 
tions—that can have been, surely, what else but his better 
nature and the influence of his mother’s higher teaching?—kept 
him rooted in irresolution by the roadside. And had not this 
better nature ultimately prevailed, here (conceivably) our 
history would have met its end, on the roadside between Plump- 
ton and Whinsett, despite all efforts of destiny. Yet who shall 
say that destiny overlooked the finer strains of chivalry in Guy 
Openshaw’s disposition, or failed to take account of a conduct 
so assured and stedfast as to act in independence of the boy’s 
unworthier self? For, reclaiming his eyes guiltily from the 


74 


The Tree of the Garden 

imperious sign that Dibner made to them, he began auto¬ 
matically to help old Hardrip’s lass to gather up her trumpery 
belongings, always seeking to avoid direct encounter with her. 
eyes. 

By the time the strewed provisions were returned to the 
battered basket, the cart and its crazy occupant had travelled 
far down the hill towards Whinsett. Now and then some 
extra vociferation from the driver’s mouth would reach them, 
but the cause of all this bloodshed and disturbance had passed 
utterly out of hail—if, indeed, there had been ever any point 
at which his drunkenness might be said to be within it—and 
the girl was become perforce a pedestrian like Dibner Suddaby 
and Guy Openshaw. The latter, not untroubled by this new 
and unexpected complication of events, exclaimed, with genuine 
dismay: 

“He’s left you!” 

The lass slung her basket indifferently on her arm and vouch¬ 
safed a passive “Aye!” 

“I’d as lieve walk,” she added, simply and without resent¬ 
ment, “as drive wi’ him.” And forthwith set her face and foot 
to the road. “You’re walking back ti Whinsett an’ all, aren’t 
you?” she asked. 

The question placed the son of Mrs. Openshaw in a painful 
dilemma. For Dibner, he now perceived, had taken advantage 
of recent moments to increase the visible measure of his detach¬ 
ment from these proceedings, and stood contemptuously kicking 
pebbles at an appreciable distance down the road. Moreover, 
the instant the girl with the basket on her arm began to move, 
he turned his back upon them and himself showed motion, with 
his head sunk in his shoulders, whistling disconnected notes of 
casualty that added little to Guy Openshaw’s peace of mind. 
He lacked experience in taking leave, and felt himself tied to 
this ragged creature with the bloody cheek by the galling fet¬ 
ters of his own impotence. Desperately he stroke to break the 
spell that held him captive, but words and actions failed alike. 
A web, woven out of his politeness and antipathies, seemed 


75 


The Tree of the Garden 

spun around him. He sensed the fitting of the girl’s step to 
his, with all its dreadful implications of companionship, and, 
feeling himself abandoned now by Dibner—who, without look¬ 
ing back, but apparently making use of a subtle faculty of 
divination, employed his legs with such art as to keep the space 
between himself and those who followed constant. Each step 
that Guy Openshaw took forward with this embarrassing 
associate led him deeper into the toils of that from which he 
struggled to be free. All hope of escape died out of him at last. 
In front, the elusive Dibner slouched along the road, from 
whose sunk head and stolid shoulders a hundred silent taunts 
and protestations seemed to float, tainting the air that Master 
Openshaw must subsequently breathe; by his side this thing 
of rags and dust and blood kept plodding pace with him, as if 
she had been some stray brute drawing dumb comfort from 
his heel. 

The complete history of Guy Openshaw’s emotions during 
this walk can never be recorded. Every feeling, worthy and 
unworthy, wrestled for possession of his soul. Now he suffered 
a sense of shame, imposed on him by consciousness of what he 
walked with. Now he tasted pride in trying to perceive his act 
as voluntary and noble, and thought scorn upon Dibner for 
having so unworthily deserted him. By turns he was mortified, 
embarrassed, resentful, cowardly and generous. But always 
he was impotent—a prey to feelings stronger than himself. 

At first the girl beside him trudged without a word, in a 
silence the more irksome because Guy Openshaw himself lacked 
skill to break its tyranny. A yard or more of roadway sepa¬ 
rated them; he wished it had been a furlong. For all the 
things told about old Hardrip’s lass in the Suddaby kitchen 
erected now a solid barrier to sympathy, and made conjunction 
odious. He thought of her dirty hands that shaped butter and 
baked uncleanly bread; and of her dirty face that drew the 
blacksmith’s comment, and said again and again to his inner 
self: “What will they say when I get back?” 

But after awhile, when many steps together taken has seemed 


76 The Tree of the Garden 

to confirm intimacy, the girl’s lips loosened. She spoke in a 
low voice by his side, no longer looking at him (to be sure) 
with the dogged gaze that had troubled the boy’s consciousness 
in the Whinsett forge, but looking straight before her, as if she 
knew her eyes unworthy to presume upon his face. Almost 
her first remark, revealing a divination of his feelings that 
rebuked their baseness, was to offer her unwilling companion 
the freedom he dared not seek. “You don’t need to walk along 
o’ me,” she said, staring dispassionately down the dusty road in 
front of them. “Unless you like. Mebbe you’d sooner not. 
I can manage wi’ myself.” 

The words, though they bore no accent of reproach, smote 
the boy’s conscience as if they had been a voice from heaven. 

“Yon’s Dibner Suddaby,” the girl continued. “Dibner Sud- 
daby wouldn’t walk along o’ me. He wouldn’t let folk see him 
wi’ me.” The confidence, made without rancour, only added 
to the trouble in Guy Openshaw’s breast. His stock of phrases 
seemed reduced to futile solitary words, without sustenance or 
cohesion, and he could make no retort to this strange confession 
beyond the feeble interrogation: “Why not?” 

“He wouldn’t,” the girl repeated. “He’d be ower shamed. 
Neabody speaks ti me. Neabody wants me i’ Whinsett. I 
wasn’t? wanted when I was born. I’se a love child,” she im¬ 
parted to Guy Openshaw. “Mebbe you know. Very like 
blacksmith would tell you after I’d gone.” 

Guy Openshaw shook his head incomprehendingly. “What’s 
a love child?” he asked after a while, for the expression was 
new and puzzling to him. The girl slanted her dark eyes 
towards his face for a moment, as if such ignorance must be 
surely feigned, and fixed her gaze once more upon the road. 

“Don’t ye know?” she said; and, when Guy Openshaw 
shook his head: “I was born oot o’ wedlock,” she told him— 
which added little to his enlightenment and very much to his 
perplexity. “My mother wasn’t wed to my father when she 
had me,” the girl went on. “I’se a bastard. Didn’t you hear 
him telling me so as we drove past i’ cart?” Guy Openshaw 


77 


The Tree of the Garden 

returned a dubious “No.” “He’d been shouting it at me all 
the way fro’ Dimmlesea. He diz, when he’s drunk. He can’t 
bide sight o’ me when he’s ta’en a sup ower much. He dizn’t 
oft say aught ti me when he’s sober. It was him had me called 
Thosday—after day I was born on. Very like he was drunk 
then. He said it was a bad day for him an’ for my mother, an’ 
a worse day for me. I should be gi’en summut to remember it 
by. Folk meks fun o’ name, I know. 

“What’s your name?” she broke off suddenly to inquire. 

The request for so confidential a disclosure as his name 
caused a heightening of Master Openshaw’s colour, but in a 
voice correspondingly depressed he told the love-child: “Guy” 
—and she repeated it, still more to his confusion. It was a 
strange name to her, she said. “Mebbe it was a grander name 
than she was used to; but she liked it better than Thursday.” 
By this time the blood, long untended on the girl’s cheek, had 
trickled down once more as far as her chin, and dripped now 
at intervals upon her frock. Perhaps it was more as a pretext 
for interrupting a conversation threatening intimate, and even 
sacred, things that Guy Openshaw drew attention to the fact. 
“It’s still bleeding,” he informed her. “Do you know?” And 
as the girl, sniffing in her nostrils, drew clumsy knuckles across 
the wound, added: “Hadn’t you better wipe it with your 
handkerchief?” He even offered to hold her basket for her 
whilst she did so, and the girl surrendered it without a word. 
For awhile she alternated knucklings of her cheek and nose 
with aimless feelings of her frock, which latter—in lieu of the 
handkerchief not anywhere to be found in it, she took up at 
last by a tentative edge, and would have wiped this, all dusty, 
over her face had not Guy Openshaw done a noble and heroic 
thing. Perhaps some memory of his mother’s care of him in 
situations similar may have come back upon the boy. At any 
rate, he stopped the girl’s contemplated act with a sudden: 
“Don’t do that! Your frock is all dirty. See . . . take this. 
It’s cleaner.” With which he pressed his own white handker¬ 
chief into her astonished hand. At first she appeared to be too 


78 The Tree of the Garden 

much absorbed in contemplation of the surpassing softness and 
whiteness of the object offered, either to reject or use it; but 
after her scruples had demurred against the soiling of an article 
so spotless, she pressed it to her cheek, and in this exercise, 
indeed, appeared to lose consciousness of the basket, which now 
added another complication to the many embarrassing the boy. 

After this, conversation tended to become as arid as the dust 
they trod in. The girl walked mutely with set face, as she 
had sat on the cart beside old Hardrip, staunching her wound 
with Master Openshaw’s handkerchief. Master Openshaw, 
praying to be spared the humiliation of any chance encounter 
on the road, bore the basket with loathing and alarm. Dibner, 
with his hands plunged into his breeches pockets, and his lips 
.screwed up to abstracted whistling, marched doggedly ahead; 
not so remote as to disown all connection with the party, but 
far enough to be spared any liability that companionship 
involved, and close enough, at least, to lend constraint to every¬ 
thing Guy did or said. At intervals the latter took surrepti¬ 
tious stock of the girl beside him. One of her boots was laced 
with twine, which had come undone, and lashed about her foot 
in walking. Her limp frock lacked hooks in half a dozen 
places, and her hands protruded far beyond its outgrown sleeves, 
whose wristbands needed to be left unfastened to give them 
passage and to make way for the swelling forearm. The stock¬ 
ing nearest to Guy Openshaw (still gartered untidily below 
the knee) had slipped down as far as what secured it, and 
showed a patch of bare brown flesh that stirred particular 
antipathy in the boy’s breast. Again and again he tried to blot 
all knowledge of the proximity of this shameful nakedness 
from his mind, despite which some furious fascination made 
his eyes revert to what repelled them, as though these insurgent 
antipathies insisted on being fed. And yet, the perplexing truth 
remains that through all the shame and manifold repugnances 
inspired by old Hardrip’s lass, the boy’s sympathies were eager 
to bestir themselves even here, as elsewhere. His heart strug¬ 
gled valiantly to discover some pretext—if not for liking, at 


79 


The Tree of the Garden 

least for not disliking, this strange, new-found companion; 
some quality in her which might redeem the odium of her 
presence. Now and again, indeed, when he caught sight of 
her deep dark eye, fringed with its thickness of lash, he was 
suffused with a momentary flush of shame for his own ignoble 
pride; a sense of prejudices melting, as w r hen through a morn¬ 
ing mist one feels the warmth and friendship of the sun. But 
hardly was this favourable emotion stirred before some blunt 
word or crude action on the girl’s part—or a half turn of 
Dibner’s head—rehardened antipathies like a heart. 

It was therefore with a feeling of inexpressible relief that 
Guy Openshaw came to the end of his protracted ordeal before 
old Hardrip’s dirty cottage, and disembarrassed himself of the 
dreadful basket at last. No sign of the farmer was anywhere 
visible; but the spectre of the gaunt horse, browsing apatheti¬ 
cally on the oft-cropped pasture along with the lean cows, 
testified sufficiently to the inebriate’s return. Drunk though 
he might have been, the cart stood in its accustomed place 
beneath the dilapidated shed, tilting its shafts skyward; and 
curls of smoke, spiralling above the cottage chimney, bore wit¬ 
ness to a fire but recently replenished. No time was lost in 
leave-taking, and the girl said very little; but when she 
accepted the basket from Guy Openshaw’s hand, her dark eyes 
dwelt on his as though they had a language of their own and 
strove to articulate things of greater depth and meaning than 
her lips knew how to utter. This gaze into whose profundity 
Guy Openshaw incautiously stumbled had all the qualities of a 
morass; a deadly quicksand, sucking him down into it, and 
threatening to engulf him in awful depths of gratitude and 
understanding. From the peril of the girl’s deep eyes he extri¬ 
cated himself with the abruptness of alarm and turned away 
a face of crimson; not so quickly, however, but that he heard 
the girl’s voice say: “Mebbe I shall be seeing you again some¬ 
time . . . ”—a remark causing him pangs of curious concern. 

Nor did it ease his bosom of disquiet to know that the girl 
did not immediately betake herself and basket to the cottage 


8o 


The Tree of the Garden 

door, but stood for awhile beside the gate to follow his progress 
up the road, as if the happenings of this evening had conferred 
on her the right henceforth to take a personal and active 
interest in his movements. And it was not until he reached the 
turning of the road—walking much further apart from Dib- 
ner than usual—that Guy Openshaw suddenly remembered 
the pocket handkerchief left in the girl’s possession. 

io 

That night the son of Mrs. Openshaw slept indifferently. 
From his place at the supper-table in the parlour, where— 
through the open door he could by suitable manipulation of his 
head discern the Suddaby family seated round the lamp for 
their evening meal, and be a party to their converse whilst pre¬ 
serving a show of privacy and honoured seclusion, he had heard 
the mumble of Dibner’s voice with ears all burning hot; know¬ 
ing all too well the nature of the thing recounted, and sensible 
of his guilty part in it. The subdued murmur from the kitchen, 
in which so many individual voices were merged, partook 
almost of a devotional character, as though the Suddabys might 
have been at prayer, and trying for comfort’s sake to make 
believe that these were family matters they discussed, he did 
his best to keep his ears from hearing. But now and again 
some voice or other, incautiously (or it may have been deliber¬ 
ately) raised, tended to confirm his worst fears. He heard 
Mrs. Suddaby exclaim, in tones designed to take the rancour out 
of conversation, as she would have laid a soothing compress on 
a raw wound: “Poor lass! Let her be. She’s not ti blame 
for her mother’s doings, sure-ly.” Ada Suddaby, after a fur¬ 
ther mumble on the part of Dibner, cried: “What! diz thoo 
mean to say she’d impudence to let him lug yon aud basket all 
way fro’ Plumpton!” 

“An’ wipe her mucky face wi’ his hankercher!” protested 
Helen with indignation. 

“As like as not she tumbled off o’ cart o’ purpose,” Ada said. 


The Tree of the Garden 81 

“She’s brazzent enough for owt. I’se seen her peeping round 
pig-stye wall when we’ve been wi’ him i’ far close. What 
business is it of hers?” 

“Noo, I’ll tell ye what, sir,” Suddaby apostrophised Master 
Openshaw, leaning over his chair-arm to get a sight of him, 
“I wouldn’t have nowt ti do wi’ syke people. They’re a bad 
stock, and onnybody’ll tell ye same. Aud fellow mud a made 
his fortun’ nobbut he’d kept sober an’ not squandered all he 
arned ower drink an’ women. An’ yon bairn’s mother was 
as bad as him. She hadn’t been aboon a year i’ sarvice before 
she was forced ti come yam wi’ her boxes. Onny lass that 
can’t keep respectable in her fost place dizn’t desarve a second. 

. . . Aye, an’ a good place she had an’ all, wi’ good wages an’ 
as mich to eat as she wanted. She’d neabody but hersen ti 
blame.” 

Some whisperings on the part of Mrs. Suddaby, that had 
been intrusively audible through the farmer’s later words, 
brought his harangue to a temporary stop. “Why! what, 
missus?” Guy Openshaw heard him say, in a lowered voice of 
expostulation. “His mother? Lawks-a-massye! Diz she 
mean ti bring lad up ti know nowt? There’s not a lass half 
his age i’ Whinsett but could tell him as mich as I’se telling 
on him now. Oor lartle Jess could tell him all about her, as 
well as me. Thoo knows very well, missus, it’s gospel truth.” 

“Yon bairn,” he said, raising his voice once more, as if (this 
time) to reach the parlour—“yon bairn’ll do same as her mother, 
some day, sir, for badness is bred in her. It’s in her blood. 
Nobbut we live and all’s spared, an’ you come ti Whinsett i’ a 
few years’ time, you’ll know truth o’ what I’se telling o’ ye. 
She’ll never mek a decent woman nor addle a respectable wage, 
as lang as she’s wick. I tell ye what, sir,” he counselled the 
burning blood-red ears that listened to him in the parlour, “if 
yon lass speaks ti ye again, I should bustle her aboot her busi¬ 
ness—sharp. An’ Mrs. Openshaw would tell ye same, I know, 
nobbut she was here.” 

All this—that is to say, the little that he understood and the 


82 


The Tree of the Garden 

much that was blankly unintelligible—troubled Master Open- 
shaw’s slumber and stained his fair peace of mind with hues of 
shame. The topic of old Hardrip’s lass, even when unspoken, 
hung like a secret curtain between Mrs. Openshaw’s son and 
the Suddaby household. Let but the name of Hardrip crop up 
in conversation—or some more distant reference to the lass 
than that—and Master Openshaw’s gaze grew vague and 
troubled. The thatched cottage and the arid acres round it 
constituted an infected area to be at any cost avoided. 

Yet for all his vigilance and circumspection he could not 
escape encounters with the girl; unexpected meetings that 
impregnated conscience with a sense of awful secrecy and guilt, 
as if he were the girl’s associate in sin. And much though he 
yearned to open his heart on the subject of these chance 
encounters, for the purging of deception, and to confide what 
had transpired in a voice as casual as the incident itself, yet 
he had been trained in no duplicity, and even Innocence has 
need of guile, at times, to help her in her own defence. Instead, 
he dug a pit within his bosom and there buried, as he thought, 
all evidence of intercourse with old George Hardrip’s lass; but 
the soil heaped over a secret is like the treacherous earth above 
a murdered corpse. By one keen look at him the Suddaby 
family knew, beyond all doubt, each time its tranquil sward 
had been disturbed afresh. And besides, eyes are sharp and 
penetrating in the country; and ears are keen; and tongues 
feed and multiply on facts like maggots in cheese, so that the 
whole substance of daily life is riddled and permeated with 
these busy chroniclers of corruption. Never once did Guy 
Openshaw exchange a word with George Hardrip’s neglected 
lass but the fact was known and registered in the Whinsett 
kitchen. The boy himself heard discovery of it in the very 
voices, and flinched at each sharp shaft aimed at the Hardrip 
reputation, as if it first transfixed his guilty conscience. 

These latter weeks at Whinsett for Guy Openshaw, in fact, 
were vexed and clouded by the shadow of the girl. For ever 
he walked in fear of meeting her, and clung—where possible— 


The Tree of the Garden 83 

to one or other of the Suddaby household as his shield and 
buckler against her importunities. For ever, in the way that 
Dibner with keen knife whittled wood, Guy Openshaw sharp¬ 
ened his courage to pass her by—to slash the meshes of that 
undesirable net in which her acquaintance entangled and com¬ 
promised him. But the big black-eyed and bovine gaze had a 
strange obstructive faculty. It seemed to impede his progress 
with an almost substantial bulk, like a cow in a lane, and he 
lacked any moral quality comparable to Suddaby’s civilising 
rod for shifting it aside. Probably the girl was quick to note 
this natural weakness in him and to trespass on it. Certain 
it is she was perpetually cropping up in places where he least 
expected and could least avoid her, for all he mounted stiles and 
scrutinised each field before he crossed it, to catch a warning 
vestige of the tom cloth cap or ragged frock. There was no 
spot so unlikely but that it formed a covert for her undesired 
person. No fence seemed stout enough to restrain her; she 
drifted through blackthorn and bullace as lightly as the breath 
of cattle. To attempt to pass old Hardrip’s cottage, on Guy 
Openshaw’s part, was of a surety to bring the girl’s rags into 
sight—either round the cowshed wall or over the crazy garden 
gate, or out in the laneway to intercept him, where, with a 
switch in her hand she issued ostensibly in quest of errant 
poultry, or called the dog with unmelodious voice. It is hard 
to see how such encounters forced upon him can have yielded 
any fruit of satisfaction to old Hardrip’s lass, since they dis¬ 
played Guy Openshaw ill at ease and scant of speech and 
obviously restless for his freedom. The whole Suddaby family, 
like a Fra Angelico fresco, seemed to sit in judgment on his 
words and actions at such moments, whilst the girl’s ear was 
trained anxiously in the direction of her home, ready for the 
first sound of her grandfather’s voice that cried on her, whereat 
she would instantly slip away with a rustling of her dusty 
garments like a snake gliding through dry grass. 

One of her first acts, after the episode on Plumpton hill, was 
to waylay Guy Openshaw for the return of his handkerchief. 


84 The Tree of the Garden 

He had just left Dibner at work with plow and horses in the 
summertill, steering the polished share through the great clay 
clots, and rippling the check-band with cries of “Gee!” and 
“Bob!” and “Pollie!”—and had cast one leg already over the 
stile in the hollow of the far pasture when the girl intercepted 
him with a low “Hey!” 

Her blindness to the constraint her presence inflicted on him 
was not one of the least of the boy’s dismays. She hailed him 
with a clandestine voice, as if he shared with her a friendship 
kept secret from the outer world, walled round with inviolate 
fences of understanding, and offered him her eyes so freely and 
so obstinately that his own eyes knew not how nor where to 
look. The handkerchief, produced from the soiled recesses of 
her frock, she displayed with pride. Had he forgotten it? Did 
he think she didn’t mean to bring it back? See! she’d washed 
it clean for him, and ironed it an’ all. 

From the high standard of the Suddaby interpretation of 
these terms, the handkerchief in sober truth was neither washed 
nor ironed. If the bloodstains had been eliminated, the white¬ 
ness was gone from it too, and a lukewarm iron had failed to 
smooth out innumerable creases that would have excited the 
Suddaby contempt, as Guy Openshaw did not fail to realise. 
But the girl unfolded it for his admiration with such obvious 
dependence on his praise that he could not withhold the grati¬ 
tude she looked for. He thanked her. She was very kind. 
He had forgotten about the handkerchief. It was nicely ironed. 
Now he must be going. 

But before he could bring the other leg above the stile, for 
the girl had transfixed him in passage with her paralysing 
“Hey!” she began to ply him with more questions than the 
son of Mrs. Openshaw could adequately answer. What had 
Suddabys said to him? Were they angry? Did Dibner tell 
’em about him walking wum wi’ her, an’ lugging basket? 
Finally, as Guy Openshaw, discreetly widening the distance 
between himself and his interrogator, returned polite evasions 
to these enquiries, she dumbfounded him by asking: 


85 


The Tree of the Garden 

“Will you gie it me?” 

He was at a total loss to understand what it was she begged 
of him until the girl, reading perplexity upon his face, explained 
“Handkercher.” 

He asked feebly: 

“Why?” 

She said: “For a keepsake.” 

“A keepsake! What of?” 

Her answer was: “Of you. Summut to think o’ you by, 
when you’re gone. Will you?” 

It shocked him to part with an article, protesting his mother’s 
care, in such a quarter, but his generosity knew not how to 
refuse. He drew it from his pocket once again, saying, “If 
you like,” and gave it back to the sunburnt hand, that took it 
with grateful alacrity. 

“I shan’t use it,” she assured him. “I shall keep it lapped 
up like this, and tek care of it against you come back. Then 
I shall show it you.” 

Such fidelity, devoid of all discoverable foundation, bewil¬ 
dered the boy. He bore a new burden of perplexity and guilt 
to the Suddaby kitchen. Life in the country was infinitely 
more complex than he had deemed. The old serenity seemed 
broken, as when the storm-clouds accumulate their masses above 
the estuary and shoulder back the blue and gold of a once 
untroubled day. 


ii 

Away from her, a sort of futile warfare filled his soul. After 
each compromising encounter, in which all his happiness seemed 
wrung from him and he returned encumbered with duplicity 
and subterfuge to the Suddaby homestead—lurking about gate¬ 
ways and choosing devious courses for re-entry, that the precise 
track of his return might be obliterated—he wrought himself 
to a pitch of rebellion against the girl’s appropriation, telling 
himself he hated her. And yet, like a spiritless slave who vows 


86 


The Tree of the Garden 

resistance to the yoke in secret, he dared not strike an open 
blow for freedom. The cursed politeness that was his mother’s 
heritage, that deference to the sex which from his earliest child¬ 
hood she had inculcated, clogged the limbs of resolution like a 
robe. He could no more wound the creature with a word 
than he could have struck her with his fist. And there were 
moments when he half resolved to fabricate a liking for his 
servitude, since he lacked the courage to escape from it. But 
random shafts in the Suddaby kitchen drove him hot-faced and 
rebellious into warfare again. Everything about the girl 
offended him, shaming him with a shame that should have 
shamed her, and did not. His fastidious nature fretted against 
her salient defects, as the sea does against sharp rocks, always 
seeking to subdue their opposition, and yet feeling its own 
element too fluid to overcome such obstinate resistance. Yet 
it befel, one afternoon, when the girl encountered him on a 
sudden between the green hedge and the sulphur-tinted wheat, 
in such a narrow footway that there was no passage for him 
save by her compliance, an incensed voice (bearing more resem¬ 
blance to Ada Suddaby’s than his own) broke through his lips 
and charged the lass abruptly: 

“Why don’t you wash your face? It is all dirty.” 

Some echo of the blacksmith’s comment rang in the remark, 
though the blacksmith was an old man with a gray beard and 
a black and oily brow, and his remonstrance, though terse, 
contained a certain native whimsy that made the accusation 
not too cruel. But Master Openshaw was young, and very 
clean; his own person was sufficient protest against uncleanli¬ 
ness, without giving the rebuke a voice. It was a voice of 
patience exhausted; of long-suffering made articulate; of a 
soul casting aside the garment of charitable dissimulation. As 
the awful challenge found outlet from the boy’s lips there arose 
a sudden fire of horror and remorse within him that consumed 
him to the brows. Now, indeed, if any mortal blow could ever 
serve him, he was free. Never more would she accost him. 
At the price of cruelty he had reacquired the ancient glorious 


The Tree of the Garden 87 

liberty of Whinsett. The blue sky, the glowing sun, the sway¬ 
ing corn, the untainted friendship of the spacious kitchen—all 
these were his own once more. And yet, like one that has 
struck a coward’s stroke, he went his way, shunning himself 
rather than her. Conscience repaid the blow a hundredfold, 
showing him again and again the girl’s mute face, not flushed 
with anger or resentment, but slowly and submissively with¬ 
drawn as from a righteous wrath that bade her go. She took 
the stroke wuth all the patience of the cudgelled ass, habituated 
to blows, and perhaps Master Openshaw in his self-reproaches 
paid not enough account to the toughness of her hide. For, 
two days later, she rose before his path again; shyly, it is true, 
with the irresolution and dubiety betraying respect for a right¬ 
eousness that has revealed its strength, and whose thunders 
were known and feared; but with a brightness, too, as of one 
bearing tidings calculated to turn anger and pacify wrath. 

“See,” she said, holding out her hands. And “Look!” she 
told him, offering her face to his regard. “Is I different fro’ 
what I was last time ye spoke ti me?” 

At first, to be sure, Guy Openshaw saw little difference in 
the figure thus presented for inspection, but his conscience had 
reproached him not a little since their previous meeting, and 
was now in a magnanimous and clement mood. 

“I’se washed mysen,” she told him, in a voice of shyness 
permeated with the tones of pride. “Hands won’t come no 
cleaner; that’s not dirt—it’s sun. I washed mysen last night 
an’ all, wi’ soap an’ flannel. I mean to wash mysen reg’lar 
noo, and keep mysen clean like Suddaby lasses. I’se boon ti do 
frock an’ all, an’ darn stockings. Ye wean’t need to tell me 
to wash my face . . . for time ti come,” she added, with a 
humility that opened both doors of Guy Openshaw’s remorse. 

“I’m sorry I spoke like that to you . . . ” he said, contritely. 
“I don’t know what made me.” 

“It’s mebbe a good thing you did,” the girl decided with a 
kindling of her dark eyes. “It served me right. Other folks 
has telt me same, but I wouldn’t tek notice o’ them. More 


88 


The Tree of the Garden 

they telt me, less I cared. ... I’d tek notice of anything you 
telt me. I’d do owt you cared to ask me. Trouble is you 
wouldn’t ask me. . . . It’s not likely you should. I should 
never ’a dared to speak ti ye, nobbut you’d spoke to me first yon 
evening on Plumpton road. And if you’d liever I didn’t speak 
to you again,” she said, though she paused on the brink of an 
undertaking that demanded so much of her courage, as if it 
had been a precipice, “I wean’t.” 

Only once again did Master Openshaw and old Hardrip’s 
lass exchange words as boy and girl, and that was on the after¬ 
noon before Mrs. Openshaw came with a quickened heart to 
Whinsett to reclaim her son. He had been to the sea-shore to 
gather some seaweed for a weather gauge, like the bunch that 
hung behind the Whinsett kitchen door, and that the Suddaby 
family took hold of with solicitude on Saturdays and festal 
occasions to learn the disposition of the elements, and was 
returning by the grass lane from Suddaby’s clover field when 
all at once the girl detached herself from the hedge in front of 
him. She held something wound in her coarse apron, which, 
as he neared her, she unwrapped with an air of secrecy and 
pride. “See!” she said, and thrust clumsily into his hand a 
brown sweet cake, studded with raisins, of the size of a house 
brick, and baked (by the feel of it) to pretty much the same 
consistency. The loaf made contact with Guy Openshaw’s 
palm, and had implicated his acceptance before he fully realised 
the nature of the girl’s action or the gift conferred, enquiring 
with the blankness of surprise, as he gazed at the offering in 
his hand: 

“What’s this?” 

“It’s for you,” the girl said in a low and urgent voice. “I’se 
baked it o’ purpose. I know it’s not like what you get at Sud¬ 
daby’s, nor what you get at wum, but I didn’t know what else 
to gie ye. Don’t let Suddabys see it. Put it under your coat and 
hide it while you get back to Beatonthorpe.” 

From the acceptance of such an embarrassing tribute, that 
was too large for any of his pockets, and that hands were 


The Tree of the Garden 89 

insufficient to conceal, Master Openshaw strove to extricate 
himself with most polite and scrupulous demur; but the girl’s 
face betrayed a disappointment so intense at the mere suggestion 
of refusal that he lacked all heart for further resistance, and 
introduced the solid object under his coat as the donor recom¬ 
mended him, where it impressed its hardness uncomfortably 
upon his stomach. 

“You’re going wum ti-morn,” the girl remarked, after he 
had thanked her for a gift so kind and so repugnant to his 
feelings. “Are you sorry?” 

For some things he was sorry; for some things he was glad 
(he told her). 

“I know somebody who’ll be sorry,” the girl assured him. 
“Somebody who’ll miss you when you’re gone ...” and Guy 
Openshaw was injudicious enough to enquire: “Who?” 

“Me!” said the girl. 

It is, perhaps, significant of Guy Openshaw’s youth and 
innocence of mind that he could find no possible explanation 
of this bewildering statement. How could such a girl profess 
to miss him? She knew nothing whatever about him. He 
decided that it must be politeness which caused her to speak 
thus, and replied: “It is very kind of you to say so.” 

“Shall you miss me ?” the girl asked, in a lower voice, after 
a pause—and herself saved him the trouble of perjuring his 
soul by dismissing the suggestion as preposterous. “You wean’t, 
I know very well. It’s not to sense you should. I’se nought 
to you, an’ never like to be. But will you think o’ me, all 
same?” 

He conceded, “If you like, I will.” 

“You promise?” said this strange girl. 

He answered : “Yes! I promise.” 

“Will you think o’ me noo an’ again, an’ mek believe you’re 
talking to me like you are noo? I’ll think o’ you same road. 
I s’ll oftens think o’ you. I s’ll look at hankercher you gi’ed me 
an’ think o’ night you let me have it ti wipe my face w”. 


90 


The Tree of the Garden 

“You’ll come back to Whinsett, wean’t you?” she asked 
anxiously. “Say you will.” 

“I don’t know,” Guy Openshaw’s punctilious conscience 
answered. “I’d like to. Perhaps I shall. I hope I shall.” 

“Aye, do!” the girl begged fervently. “Before very long, 
an’ all. Try your best. Will you promise me to come if 
you can?” 

This, too, Guy Openshaw promised, being a promise very 
easy of fulfillment, inasmuch as, strictly speaking, it promised 
nothing. And with that, and the girl’s final undertaking: 
“I s’ll look out for you ti-morn, as you gan by,” Guy Open¬ 
shaw took his leave. He knew the girl stood where he left 
her, ready to wave her hand the instant he turned his head, but 
this act of conclusive magnanimity he deferred until the twist¬ 
ing lane gave assurance that such signals should be unpro¬ 
tracted. The girl’s bare arm went up instantly, as he expected; 
his own hand made a brief response; the next moment the high 
lane hedge and sloping banks rose up between them. 

And now, being safely out of sight and observation, he came 
to a standstill and drew forth the dreadful thing from under¬ 
neath his jacket. He had accepted it to spare the girl’s feel¬ 
ings, but how could he smuggle so incriminating a possession 
across the Suddaby threshold? The more he looked at it the 
more its awful substance seemed to grow; it lay on his out¬ 
stretched hand with a weight insufferable. As his embarrassed 
eye roamed over its burnt crust and carbonised raisins, he 
came to conceive a horror of what he held. 

The sudden sound of a dog’s bark at close quarters startled 
him to desperation. Somebody was coming up the lane; per¬ 
haps Dibner; perhaps the lynx-eyed Suddaby himself. His 
crime would be discovered. And all at once his hands, burning 
to be rid of what betrayed them, flung the cake into the hedge- 
bottom. The act accomplished went straightway to his heart, 
as did every meanness or ungenerous word, but there was no 
time for conscience to revoke it, for the dog came on him at 
that moment, with its master close following on its tail. By 


9 1 


The Tree of the Garden 

one of those curious coincidences in which fate, in her more 
serious moods, so frequently indulges, this was none other than 
George Hardrip’s rheumy and ungainly self, who shed a watery 
glance on Master Openshaw in passing, that to the latter 
seemed charged with grim significance, albeit in point of fact 
it rested on the boy with less speculation than the farmer would 
have bestowed on a store pig. The twain met, and when at 
last the sound of the old man’s limping footsteps and the 
occasional thud of the hedge-stake which served to aid his loco¬ 
motion had faded out of hearing, Master Openshaw’s remorse 
drove him furtively back again to the cake’s place of sepulture 
—to reassure himself, at least, that the goose-grass and wound¬ 
wort and dead nettles and tenacious briars preserved his secret. 
So effectually, indeed, did they appear to discharge the office 
laid upon them that not for all his pricking of regardless fingers 
could he discern the thing he sought. In strict reason this 
should have been of reassurance to him rather than disquiet, 
but human nature is inconsistent, and the boy would have felt 
more satisfied had he been able to gain a glimpse of the object 
he wished so effectually concealed from the sight of others. 
He wiped his hands at last, and relinquished a search that had 
already been prosecuted with success by one infinitely more 
skilled in such matters than himself: to wit, Hardrip’s dog. 
That noble sniffer of hedgerows and rat-holes, dependent on 
the keenness of his nostril for many of the good things of an 
otherwise barren existence, had been quick to scent and drag 
the hidden thing to light, and would have consumed it then 
and there had not his master, missing him, rapped out peremp¬ 
torily the animal’s name, and smitten the ground with the 
hedgestake as he walked. And since obedience was one of 
the cardinal conditions on which old Hardrip’s dogs were suf¬ 
fered to enjoy the blessings of his ownership, the animal no 
sooner heard its name than it snapped up the cake between 
a double row of complacent white teeth and carried it at a 
cheerful trot in the wake of the old man’s corduroys to the 
brown-thatched cottage, where, as they entered through 


92 


The Tree of the Garden 

the gate, the farmer’s watery eyes for the first time fell on the 
dark wedge in the dog’s jaws. 

“What’s brute gotten?” he cried; and the lass put her head 
out of the door. She ran to the dog, seized his chops in her 
two hands, and pulled them apart so that the cake, half-chewed, 
all wet and slimy, dropped upon the doorstep. The dog, 
defrauded of his prize and scenting disgrace and probable pun¬ 
ishment in the way in which the girl’s hands dispossessed him 
of it, drooped his tail and slunk aside, watching consequences 
with a wistful but despondent eye. The girl picked up the 
fallen loaf and knew it for her own, and read its history in a 
trice, but her eyes betrayed no sign. “It’s a keak,” she said. 

“Where’s he gotten it fro’?” asked Hardrip. “Brute hadn’t 
it when we cam’ thruff grass lane. Syke thinks dizn’t belang 
us, or I’d fill his belly full eneaf wi’ this stick. Throw it 
i’ pig tub.” 

Without a word she obeyed the old man’s behest. The thing 
she had baked by stealth, at grave peril to her shoulders, as an 
oblation to a fair, white, thankless divinity, splashed into the 
malodorous swill-tub, just about the time that Master Open- 
shaw gave up his quest for it. 

Yet such was the curious fidelity of this strange creature 
that, beyond the suffering entailed by her own disappointment, 
she bore no malice to the author of it, any more than the hound 
does to the master that beats him. 

All next day she kept a watchful eye for the boy’s departure, 
and saw him go by with his mother at last, along the road to 
Dimmlesea, in Abram Blockley’s chaise. As though the inci¬ 
dent of overnight were insufficient for her rebuff, she ran at 
the first sound of wheels to the cottage gate, holding her head 
lowered, it is true, and offering only the shyness of dropped 
eyes and the posture of humility to his recognition, through the 
tumbled strands of her black hair. No recognition rewarded 
her. The chaise droned onward. She saw a young gentleman 
seated beneath the shadow of a lady’s parasol, who appeared 
to be much engaged in drawing the latter’s attention to the 


The Tree of the Garden 93 

trees and weathered roofs of Whinsett as they sank gradually 
behind him. 

“He isn’t thinking o’ me,” was the girl’s regretful thought. 
“He’s forgot me already.” But here she was in error, for she 
occupied Guy Openshaw’s guilty mind acutely as the chaise 
went by, and his activities in the direction of Whinsett were 
but the unworthy proof of it. 

She ran round the rough-cast cottage walls to the pig-tub, 
where, with the westering sun in her eyes and her brown hands 
held up to shield them, she strove to prolong this bitter 
moment. Hope, that wonderful quality of the human mind, 
that is all things under all circumstances, can magnify or 
diminish, shorten or extend, was as a telescope to the girl’s 
vision, and showed her Mrs. Openshaw and her son until they 
were microscopic specks on the Plumpton hill, before their final 
absorption into the shadow of the great elms. When they were 
utterly gone, and not before, she renounced the preposterous 
hope that he might wave some last farewell, and withdrew 
her hands from her brow, to stare for awhile at the stern 
immediate objects of her narrow life with the stupid and 
unseeing gaze of one whose far-fetched vision is as yet un¬ 
readjusted to the sight of nearer things; at the reeking pig-tub; 
the poultry, scratching dust-pits for their bodies in the hard hot 
soil of the untidy yard; the clogged drain-trap behind the 
scullery window, aswim with the recent suds poured into it; 
the gaping door through which her work awaited her; the 
brown and flea-infested thatch beneath whose rotten covering, 
between bare boards and rough-hewn rafters she had so often 
laid and would so often lay the hot cheek of injustice on a soiled 
pillow, biting her scant coverlet—or, as frequently, the flesh of 
her own arm—to chronicle wrongs and kindle fortitude for the 
sustaining of them through self-inflicted pain. Beings like this 
do not reason out their rights and wrongs: they merely suffer 
and resent them, and when they think, they bring all their 
labouring body to the task, as they use both lips and fingers when 
they spell, or as Matthew Batty employs his every nerve and 


94 


The Tree of the Garden 

sinew in devotion, and makes each steaming pore a gateway to 
piety. These are the natures for violent conversions, for dogged 
loves and burning hatreds, in whom mind and body are so 
deceptively commingled that they know not in which part of 
their being the emotion stirring it resides; loves and hates being 
felt like hunger, and passions confounded with the wrath of 
God. When George Hardrip’s lass betook herself indoors out 
of the fierce sunlight that had wrapped up Master Openshaw 
from her, all her body suffered his loss like a sickness, brought 
on by she scarce knew what—or to what end tending, save to 
be mutely suffered. She drew her knuckles across her smarting 
lashes; raked up the red embers in the kitchen grate; unslung 
the sooty kettle, and resumed her sordid life in the world of 
pots and pans, pigslap, henmeal, curses and cudgels; bearing 
her peculiar sorrow with stolid outward unconcern, as she 
would have carried the swill-bucket—staggering under a 
burden inevitable and decreed. 


IV 


I 

A VISITOR of consequence is expected at Whinsett. Five 
years almost to a week have passed since Mrs. Open- 
shaw brought her only son to Suddaby’s for his 
health’s sake. The Plumpton publican of that day remembers 
nothing, for in this he is an inveterate sleeper beneath the west¬ 
ern wall of the Plumpton churchyard; the stone set over him to 
watch his slumber begins to lean already, like one of his old cus¬ 
tomers at closing time. Nor does Mrs. Bulson sit propped up be¬ 
fore her bedroom window in a posture of bewildered expecta¬ 
tion, for she has shaken off bronchitis and all her other earthly 
attributes, and is become but a shape in the green turf. But the 
Plumpton blacksmith and his wife remember well the day that 
brought the widow of John Openshaw and her son to Whin- 
sett—a delicate, pale boy, with shy and wondering eyes, and 
a mouth so supplicative and confiding as to stir the heart of 
motherhood with curious impulses to kiss it. To-day Master 
Openshaw is coming back to Whinsett for the renewal of old 
memories. Rumour (confirmed by Dibner Suddaby, who drove 
from Dimmlesea after breakfast with a cartload of advance 
luggage) says that the young gentleman means to sleep in a 
tent and prepare some of his own meals, albeit retaining for 
alternative use the bedroom and parlour at Whinsett as of old. 
That the inheritor of a substantial fortune can go to such 
elaborate lengths to purchase inconvenience the district finds 
hard to comprehend, but it welcomes none the less the prospect 
of Guy Openshaw’s return, even where assessing it at no higher 
value than a distraction, and there are sightseers already who 
promise themselves a pilgrimage to the Suddaby six-acre as 
soon as the visitor’s tent is pitched in it. 

95 


96 The Tree of the Garden 

it is jubilant green June again when Guy Openshaw con¬ 
fronts the blue wall of water that rules the eye at Dimmlesea, 
and in every quarter the cuckoo is a-wing. To turn back the 
bulky book of Time to some bygone page in quest of a happi¬ 
ness once writ down in it is ever hazardous. The ink, per¬ 
chance, has faded; the page bears an ancient, superannuated 
look; the breath exhaled from it has a mouldy, mortuary odour. 
There is a fear that happiness, kept too long, may sour on a 
sudden, lose condition like choice wine, and taste other than 
when it was laid down, or at the due time of its maturity. 
Even memories ripen, and there is a moment when they are at 
their best. Guy Openshaw bore away from Whinsett some 
wonderful memories that grew imperceptibly with the boy’s 
mind, to fill the measure of its broadening horizons. This is 
the secret of old age’s exaltation of the things of its youth, 
which—if unchecked by actual reference—grow up with the 
memory that retains them to satisfy such standards as youth 
never had. To Guy Openshaw the cuckoo remains the same, 
for bird and memory have had their vernal balance of accounts 
and equipoised each other year by year (for all he is disposed 
to think the bird sings at its best in Whinsett) ; but elsewhere, 
and in other things, Guy Openshaw notes changes. Dimmle¬ 
sea shows bleak and dreary. He had believed it infinitely 
larger, cleaner, more impressive. Blockley’s boy has grown an 
inch, though its effect seems to have shrunk him. Five years 
of indefatigable “kt-kt’s” have put tucks at each corner of his 
mouth as big as threepenny pieces, and the mouth itself is by 
this time so extended as to give it the semblance of being drawn 
back over a horse-bit and buckled under each ear. Poultry 
roost in the mouldering remnants of the old chaise, which is 
replaced by a decayed Victoria on whose once opulent but now 
use-hardened cushions Guy Openshaw seats himself with a 
curious eagerness to realise anew this land of dreams; asking, 
as the roadway shrinks and lengthens, if it can truly be the 
wonderland of youthful memory. It strikes him now as flat 
and featureless. Important elements, he knows not what, seem 


97 


The Tree of the Garden 

missing from it; colour has faded; hedges have dwindled; the 
trees are blown and bitten by the gales that contend so furiously 
with their branches in the spring. Himself seems the only 
feature permanent and unchanged. 

And yet he is grown so tall, and for all his slenderness there 
is such buoyancy and lithe health about his bearing that the 
Plumpton blacksmith—who chances to be gazing down 
the Dimmlesea road with a shoe-rasp in the hand that screens 
his eye—has to cry God bless him! before imprinting four 
cordial black fingers and a thumb on the hand that Guy Open- 
shaw, jumping out of the vehicle at the first sight of him, holds 
out. He is the first of the race of old-time heroes that the boy 
encounters; the first to be met with of that ancient order of dei¬ 
ties about whose shoulders the twilight seems already to be 
gathering. This friendly grey-bearded fellow whose wiry arms 
look to be laced with wrinkles rather than with sinews can 
never be the stern abstracted figure that stood of old like Vulcan 
by his forge; dark as a cold cinder on the outside, lined with red 
wrath and burning words within, like his own fierce embers 
when he blows upon them! To stand by the elbow of such 
a being and see the flesh harden in that great fore-arm as he 
gripped the pincers; wincing, despite oneself, each time his 
spark-compelling hammer fell—was akin to worship. This 
other is but a friendly mortal that clasps the boy’s hand; the 
boy is grown tall enough to look over the blacksmith’s head and 
see harmless white hairs where once Jove’s clouds and thunder¬ 
bolts were deemed to be. But if the element of awe be gone, 
no quality of friendliness is lacking. It protests, rather, a 
cumulative quality, as if all the storage of the past five years 
were in it. He is amazed to learn that Guy has only just left 
school, deciding that his vistor must by now be “that high- 
larned while there’s nowt ni more onnybody can teach him; 
and is still more astonished to find this so far from being the 
case that there is a question of Guy Openshaw’s studies being 
continued at a University. The boy’s own inclinations, per¬ 
haps, might have urged this step at once, but his mother had 


98 The Tree of the Garden 

craved for a little respite before surrendering her son after such 
prolonged sacrifice during the past five years. 

Guy Openshaw remains to shake hands with the black¬ 
smith’s wife, beaming benignant welcome through her glasses 
in response to the smile shed over her from his advantageous 
height. In his light grey homespuns he looks a lissome and 
attractive boy. These five years have blunted nothing of his 
old delicacy and fineness of feature. His skin is fresh, as then, 
though warmer, and his eyebrows—though deepened—are not 
more broadly pencilled than before; more pliable, however, 
and quicker to respond. They relax instantly over a very sweet 
and winsome smile, and save him many words; for he has this 
habit of smiling rather than speaking, and the most of his talk 
with the smith’s wife consists of a series of radiant flashes that 
seem like sunshine of the heart. His height amazes her. She 
cannot credit (so she says) that this is the young gentleman of 
five years ago who came into her parlour one Saturday evening 
(does he remember it?) and had some spice-cake and new milk. 
To be sure Guy Openshaw remembers it. 

“I had to stoop down then to gie you a kiss,” the black¬ 
smith’s wife reminds him. Does he remember that too ? 

“Kiss!” exclaims the blacksmith. “Didn’t thoo get all kiss¬ 
ing thoo wanted when thoo was a lass?” 

“What lass ever diz?” the blacksmith’s wife admits be¬ 
nignly. 

She looks at Guy Openshaw with a roguish eye that asks 
him to confess he knows the truth of this, and Guy Openshaw 
yields her the sunny smile that seems to satisfy her heart he 
does; but the truth is, he knows prodigious little about the 
other sex, and his ignorance perplexes him at times. These 
five school-years have taught him some disconnected, surrep¬ 
titious knowledge that only serves to embarrass him in the 
presence of the feminine gender (whose acquaintance he has 
mainly made through the study of declensions) and disquiets 
him in solitude. Thanks to his mother’s influence, and her 
anxiety to hide from him the earthly parentage of his human 


The Tree of the Garden 99 

nature, sex is but an inarticulate expression of the blood; 
the insurgence of a force within him that he struggles to sub¬ 
due; the force of intrinsic evil (he feels) arising out of the 
unworthiness of his nature, which would shock and grieve 
his mother’s faith in him if she did but suspect what self- 
created phantoms contest his purity and taint his peace of mind. 

As the Victoria rumbles slowly down the Plumpton hill, 
the memory of a certain Saturday evening comes back to 
Guy Openshaw, when he walked homeward with Dibner 
after a night of bullring in the blacksmith’s forge. Yes! surely 
it would be hereabouts that an old and drunken man, with a 
profane and dribbling mouth, and reeling on a decrepit cart, 
smote the girl accompanying him on to the roadway. The 
episode returns with force, for he has never forgotten the 
white thick dust upon the girl’s face and frock as she arose, 
nor the blood-star that blossomed on her cheek bone. Also he 
remembers the scattered candles and the burst blue bags, but 
five years have effaced many details of the picture from his 
mind, and he does not dwell upon this recollection. Instead 
he fixes his eye on distant Spraith, and on the clump of trees 
that is Whinsett, and traces the irregular sweep of coast-line 
that has parted company with the road at Dimmlesea (though 
coming here and there to within speaking distance of it) 
until the two draw very near together at Whinsett Magna. 
Mounting the hill at this point, the Victoria overtakes a file 
of cows that move indolently through the roadside grass with 
many a capricious pause; now stopping of a sudden to lick 
their flanks with rasp-like tongues from which the pendent 
spittle hangs in viscous ropes, or flinging back impatient horns 
at the flies that pester them, or blowing breaths of deep enquiry 
at the ripening cockfoot and red sorrel. They swing their 
great udders like censers; their cleft hoofs give them noiseless 
motion, and their tails, petulantly lashed, flail the dust and 
pollen from the tall grasses. Behind them in the roadway 
saunters a girl in a blue print frock, her head protected from 
the sun by nothing but her own dark hair. Occasionally she 


IOO 


The Tree of the Garden 

speaks to her charges in a tone of command or exhortation. 
“Pollie . . . Nancy . . . Vi-let!”—which the cows complacently 
disregard; but her chief concern is with some white work that 
she crochets industriously as she walks. She turns her face as 
the Victoria goes by, but as it is a face unknown to Guy 
Openshaw, and (from the brief glimpse he catches of it) 
too attractive to be looked at without embarrassment, he drops 
his eyes and gazes seaward. After the danger has been out¬ 
distanced, and the little flush of perturbation has died down 
into the boy’s bosom, it occurs to him to wonder whose these 
four cows may be, and he is disposed to wish that he had had 
the courage to give their guardian a greeting. Had she been 
an older woman with an unattractive face, he would un¬ 
doubtedly have done so; but youth and anything approaching 
beauty in the other sex invariably constrain him. Mrs. Open¬ 
shaw has inculcated in her son so high a conception of the 
sanctity of womanhood that he stands almost in awe of it. 

2 

Whinsett once more! Whinsett once more! The street- 
gate in the green hedge with the old walnut tree leaning 
over it from the orchard, whose lowermost branches comb 
the loads of wheat in harvest time as the wagons rumble by. 
The orchard pump, up to its spout in nettles, with its coping 
all awry and groundsel growing out of the rotted wood. The 
rusty-green hencoops and cracked pie-dishes under the apple 
trees; the clothes-props against the sheltering poplars; the hot 
hens entrenched like soldiery in dusty pits along the hedge 
roots; the dragging wicket that lets into the garden and 
hiccoughs on its hinges; the foxglove spires above the palissade; 
the laburnum; the bees; the whitened doorstep with the pro¬ 
tective mat over it. All things as they have ever been, and 
as Guy Openshaw has known them—yet curiously smaller, 
like his own childish garments that his mother treasures, and 


The Tree of the Garden ioi 

that he looks at with wonder to think his limbs could ever 
have been contained in such minute receptacles. 

Thus far he perceives no change except in scale. The sledge 
door still lacks the wheel that Suddaby has been going to 
bring back from Hunmouth this past ten years, when he has 
time. The same churn stands drying in the sun on the 
courtyard cobbles, whose handle the early Guy Openshaw 
turned with such responsibility and care. The same cats sleep 
on the wall by the swill-tub and offer their sleek furred bellies 
to the sun. He runs round by the kitchen door in advance 
of the Victoria, and his advent is unexpected, but at the first 
step on the cobbles he hears his name, and enters the kitchen 
to the sound of pushed chairs and scraping feet. He puts out 
his hand to George Herbert, drying the back of his sunburnt 
neck on the towel behind the door, and lo! it is not George 
Herbert, but Dibner, grown into the firstborn’s very counter¬ 
part and image. George Herbert has been married these two 
years, with a son of his own just recovering from croup, and 
lives hind at Hallum in place of his father-in-law, now retired 
to the chimney corner vacated by the old lady, who has dropped 
asleep and tumbled out of her chair at last—so there have been 
changes all round. And Ada is married, too (though not to 
Arthur Barton, but to the fifth young man since his time), 
and lives at Peterwick; and Helen is grown big enough to 
fill her sisters’ place twice over, blushing so furiously on Guy 
Openshaw’s entrance that her cheek glows like the kitchen 
fire on a bake-day. And Lartle Jessie more than replaces the 
Helen of five years back, with touches of comb and ribbon 
vanity about her hair. Only at Suddaby and his wife does 
Time appear to have stood still—like a sculptor considering his 
work. They do not look a day older than when Guy Open¬ 
shaw shook their hands five years ago. And if excitement or 
hospitable zeal count in any wise for youth, then Suddaby 
and his wife are the youngest in the kitchen, for their circling 
friendship makes a vortex into which all topics are dizzily 
absorbed. Dibner, having tendered and reclaimed his half- 


102 


The Tree of the Garden 

dried hand, towels himself in silence behind the door, with his 
eyes to the wall, as if these welcomes—like tears and kisses 
and all such weaknesses of human nature—were but an em¬ 
barrassment, and best ignored. Now the farmer and his wife 
are in the past tense; now in the present; anon in both together 
through the haste with w T hich they seek to weld the broken 
wheel of time. At moments Mrs. Suddaby possesses the visi¬ 
tor’s ear, Suddaby his eye—a most distracting situation for 
polite natures, since he cannot reclaim his eye from the one 
nor his ear from the other, and dares not show too much 
appreciation of what Mrs. Suddaby tells him for fear of en¬ 
couraging her husband, whose voice mounts affably higher on 
his wife’s words like a cockerel strutting up the hen-house 
perches to roost. But it is all very friendly and gratifying 
and hospitable, and though Guy Openshaw finds in the kitchen 
only a shrinkage of what his memory had pictured, he is touched 
at the warmth of the welcome accorded him. 

“Lawks! but I’se strange and glad to see ye, sir,” the farmer 
cries. “You may depend we’ve oftens talked about ye sin’ 
you w T ent away.” 

“Lasses couldn’t forget ye,” Mrs. Suddaby chimes in. “They 
thought, mebbe, you was grown ower grand ti come back to 
Whinsett. They’ve been running ti shade-corner all afternoon 
ti look if you was coming doon Plumpton hill.” 


3 

Meanwhile, the visitor has not been suffered to stand. He 
has been bidden to the fire by Suddaby—which blazes upon 
the hearth as if the month were December instead of June, 
and contends with the sunlight as to whose beams burn hottest. 

“Come your ways ti fire, sir, an set doon where it’s cheerful. 
I know very well you’ll be tired after your journey and a 
bit o’ fire nivver comes amiss. Yon grate hasn’t been cold 
yance sin’ ye left us, let w r eather be what it will.” 

And Mrs. Suddaby has been rebuked: “What, missus! 


103 


The Tree of the Garden 

Three women i kitchen, an’ no chair for Master Openshaw 
ti set hissen doon on?” At once as many chairs have been 
disposed for him in sundry quarters of the kitchen, and the 
settle cleared of a pancheon and Dibner’s coat, and preparations 
for a table welcome are set in motion on Master Openshaw’s 
behalf. These he seeks to restrain, but the farmer will hear 
no word of moderation. He is fired up to friendliness like a 
piece of well-dried kindling, and must burn and crackle to the 
end. So a cloth is laid for their visitor in the parlour, at the 
end of the table where he used to sit five years ago, within 
catch of the farmer’s eye at any time the latter chose to tilt his 
chair, and curds and cheese-cakes are laid before him like 
offerings to the gods; Jessie fetches spring-onions and lettuce 
from the garden; Mrs. Suddaby goes to the store cupboard 
in the best parlour for virgin honey; Helen cuts a rasher of red 
rich ham; Jessie departs again, this time to plenish her apron 
with fresh eggs, warm from the laying. In the kitchen they 
can hear the clutter of protesting hens, plucked ignominiously 
from brooding places by the tail and sent hurtling into the 
foldyard straw, whence they pick up their skirts and bustle 
to the stackyard, one after another, indignantly proclaiming 
their grievances—as though to convene an instant meeting 
for the emancipation of poultry and the protection of egg- 
layers’ rights. Soon the ham frizzles on the fire; flames 
encircle the saucepan whose water quivers in their hot embrace; 
the eggs play castanet against the porcelain; in time great 
white bubbles, big as eggs themselves, leap up to the saucepan 
rim and over, and spit into the fire, while Helen keeps watch 
over the ham with a vigilant fork. The cats, sniffing a new 
element in the sunlight, trace the source of it to the kitchen, 
and slink round to the fireplace by way of the walls. There 
is no dog to stretch his length upon the hearthrug, for Bob is 
in the orchard, and will no more blink at the red fire-bars nor 
dry his wet nose at the grate, nor thrust it with silent in¬ 
sistence into the hollow of Master Openshaw s hand; but 
there is one of the grandest pups in this part of the country 


104 The Tree of the Garden 

over the fields, at Hallum, undergoing a course of sheep¬ 
training with George Herbert, and receiving a thorough prep¬ 
aration to be trodden on in the Whinsett kitchen. 

Tea being at last proclaimed ready, in response to the 
farmer’s third enquiry—“Noo, are we fit, missus?”—they 
draw to table. Suddaby, seating himself in the bentwood arm¬ 
chair, rises with it still attached to his person, in a posture 
between sitting and standing, and moves like a snail with its 
shell on its back to the table end, where he subsides into im¬ 
mediate reminiscence. “Lawks! I remember yance, when I 
was nobbut a lartle tiny lad . . .” Dibner, in shirt sleeves, 
takes his place by Allison. Guy Openshaw retires to the 
parlour, where, from his honoured seat, he can see the back 
of Allison’s head and Suddaby’s right eye and side-whisker— 
amplified every other moment into the farmer’s full visage as he 
leans out to say: “Noo you may depend, Master Openshaw!” 
or “Mek a good tea, sir; you’ve n’ occasion ti stint; there’s 
plenty more i’ kitchen.” The Misses Helen and Jessie Sudda¬ 
by hover about the kitchen table with their mother, ready by 
their fathers’ elbow if he calls for more meat, or to sweeten 
Dibner’s tea, or teem out a fresh cupful for Allison Marriot— 
these lords of creation being as helpless as grubs in a cauli¬ 
flower when they sit at table. There is, of course, some pride 
of sex attaching to this dependence on the womenfolk for food. 
Suddaby would no more think of cutting his own meat than 
he would dream of stitching his shirt or knitting his socks; 
and Dibner would thirst with the teapot touching his hand 
sooner than raise the latter to serve himself. Now and again 
Guy Openshaw hears the monosyllable “Bread!” uttered in 
a muffled voice, as if some ruffian pressed his hand over the 
speaker’s mouth. This is Dibner, announcing through his last 
mouthful an imminent necessity for more, which is cut for 
him by his mother—who holds the loaf in the pit of her 
stomach and stops the knife-blade with her thumb. All through 
tea the farmer’s voice is active; Master Openshaw’s coming has 
put him in the finest conversational humour. He even throws 


The Tree of the Garden 105 

a leg over the arm of his chair, which is a sure sign of inward 
satisfaction. He has a hundred questions to ask, once he has 
blown the froth off his own loquacity, concerning Master 
Openshaw’s life at home. He has not forgotten the details of 
Mrs. Openshaw’s house, nor the number of servants kept in it. 
Tea is almost over before old Hardrip and his lass are men¬ 
tioned. Respecting the latter, a voice (Guy Openshaw cannot 
decide whether it issues from Helen or Jessie) suggests that 
Dibner is the best individual to interrogate on this topic— 
a remark that draws from him the muttered expostulation, 
“Noo then!” But the theme is not developed, and, truth to 
tell, Guy Openshaw experiences little interest in it. He re¬ 
calls old Hardrip as an obese and beery-looking rascal with a 
loose mouth and leaking eyes; the girl as a creature of dirt 
and tatters, who slipped through hedges like a clubstart and 
compromised his later weeks at Whinsett. For the rest, he 
looks upon this chapter of his life as past and gone, and makes 
no effort to reopen it. 


4 

Destiny wasted no time with Guy Openshaw on the occasion 
of his second coming to Whinsett. He came—had he but 
realised it—obedient to her call. The tiny seed dropped in 
his breast five years ago had taken all this while to germinate, 
but now the plant must grow apace. This same evening he 
saw George Hardrip’s lass again. 

But first, under the shelter of a tall buttery-bush in the 
Suddaby six-acre, a triangular patch of gorse and brambles 
with its base to the sea, his tent was pitched. Suddaby helped 
with the pitching of it (not less ardent in the work, or less 
admiring of this white pavilion of wonder, replete with every 
convenience, than the owner’s self), and took reluctant leave 
at last, impelled by claims of further foddering to be done. 
Next the Misses Helen and Jessie Suddaby came up the lane, 
bearing Guy Openshaw’s evening milk in a blue jug, beneath a 
muslin apron, and a weighty butter-basket which their mother s 


io6 The Tree of the Garden 

thoughtfulness had packed with ham-cake, curds, honey, rock- 
semper, hard-boiled eggs and a bottle of cowslip wine. Pos¬ 
sessed of which the sisters marched proudly on their mission 
that they had been burning to fulfil ever since it was proposed 
to them; ill at ease in Guy Openshaw’s tall presence, yet 
proudly happy the moment they had left it, and disposed to 
regret the visit so quickly at an end. Out of politeness he 
showed them the tent, indicating this or that with sufficient 
lack of ardour to defend him from the charge of vanity—his 
callers keeping close company the while; Jessie retaining hold 
of her sister’s arm and sometimes plucking her by the skirt. 
They welcomed any excuse to stoop for the purpose of in¬ 
spection, which served to hide their faces, and continually 
bumped their heads together in contests to be undermost, that 
they might escape responsibility for replies. But despite their 
diffidence and downcast heads they bore away a clearer knowl¬ 
edge of Guy Openshaw’s surroundings in three minutes than 
he had acquired of the Whinsett kitchen after all his intimacy 
with it. They had indelibly noted his socks and sleeve-links, 
the colour of his hair and eyes; the fairness of his skin; the 
brightness of his smile; the disquieting softness of his voice— 
and made the visitor their earnest topic until bedtime, being 
the last theme voiced by Helen in blowing out the candle. 
“Will he be gone ti bed yet, think ye?” 

Left to himself, Guy Openshaw began to make his leisured 
preparations for the night. The sun had sunk from sight 
behind the Homerise hill, setting its trees afire, so that their 
charred and blackened branches reeked in a sea of flame. 
Pallid stars began to climb above the tent, drenched in the 
flood of mellow evening light that rose from land and sea 
and flushed the sky to the very summit of heaven. All the 
east reflected the rosy radiance of the western fire, but the 
sea that fretted the level shore was silver, spreading its un¬ 
broken shallow waves through fine shingle with the sound of 
stroked silk. The rising Fothom cliffs hid Spraith, and Guy 
Openshaw’s pavilion vyas pitched too low and screened too 


The Tree of the Garden 107 

high by the umbrageous elder to catch Farnborough’s far- 
piercing beam; but Dimmlesea flashed a white and passionless 
eye upon him as he moved about his work, and spread its 
intermittent moonlight halo above the sheltering hedge. Be¬ 
lated gulls swept by; he heard in the suspended stillness of 
the evening air the rhythmic oaring of their wings; the bleat 
of distant lambs and the blare of cattle, awakened from their 
browsing to a sudden consciousness of solitude, saddened and 
sweetened the dew-refreshed air. The rattle of some far-away 
farm bucket, or the distant call of some rude cattleman, de¬ 
tached from their human context, floated with a purity almost 
plaintive across the countryside. In the fragrant stillness of 
this luminous hour, Guy Openshaw’s nature seemed to open 
like the grasses and hedge-herbs all around him, exhaling a 
sweetly melancholy consciousness of solitude. To solitude he 
was by no means unaccustomed. He had turned to her, as 
many others turn, whose human friendships are restricted; for 
his mother in her zeal to save her boy from all pernicious 
intimacies, had come at last to think there was no friend 
worthy of him save herself. Nor was this tent of his a fantasy 
untried. Already he had slept in it under the big beech trees 
in the spacious grounds at home, to his mother’s secret concern. 
Each time that rain fell, or the wind rose, and she heard the 
branches in commotion, her sleep was instantly disturbed and 
her pale brow pressed the window-pane with anxious thoughts 
of Guy. But this sleeping under canvas, and even beneath 
the undraped stars, had a score of illustrious precedents to 
recommend it. Her boy loved nature; it was a lofty and 
ennobling love (albeit her mother’s heart could not expel the 
torturing suspicion that Nature sometimes claimed more of 
her son’s affection than her share), proving his mind was sweet 
and wholesome, and the thoughts that animated him were 
clean. Yet this evening Guy Openshaw’s solitude clung about 
him with a certain melancholy not known before, like the 
heavy sweetness dispensed by funeral flowers. He had jour¬ 
neyed out to Whinsett to let his loneliness enjoy the dignity 


108 The Tree of the Garden 

of space; to feed on the unrestricted bounty of Nature’s table— 
and all at once he felt the mantle of illusion slipping to the 
ground. The vastness that his memory had lent the place was 
due to the inability of youth to draw its emotions in correct 
perspective. He had written down Whinsett in portentous, 
childish large-hand—whereas, in sober truth, it was no other 
than a shrunken space of humble soil betwixt the sea and 
sky. The boundlessness that he had come in quest of dwelt 
only in that boyish and impressionable mind whose childlike 
frontiers he had since outgrown. And, as he sat in his canvas 
chair, savouring this faint taste of disillusionment, he wondered 
if the coming had been worth his while. Sweet though the 
night was, and pearly-clear the stars, and pure the air he drew 
into his lungs—he felt a lingering hunger for the reek of 
lamp and gleam of fire and hum of cheerful and familiar voices 
in the Suddaby kitchen. It was out of the profundity of such 
thoughts as these that his eyes at last collided with the reality 
of old Hardrip’s lass. 


5 

There was a little w'ood fire crackling under a tripod, not 
so much for its warmth as for its cheerful face and com¬ 
panionable smoke, ever seeking fresh shapes in which to mount 
heavenward; now in three threads, and now in one; for awhile 
in a stedfast broad ribbon of dove grey; anon in a limpid 
ripple of translucent heat alone that made the grass seen 
through it wave like water. On this he had just flung a final 
faggot, and was watching the lithe flames lick it, when his 
eyes caught sight of the girl. She had not made her approach 
by the lane, but by the cliff (and that quite unperceived), for 
she was seated already on the stile when Guy Openshaw first 
noted her; but the moment their eyes met she slipped from 
her place and came towards him. He realised at once that 
here was the girl he had overtaken on the road this afternoon 
behind the file of cows, but no suspicion of her identity crossed 


109 


The Tree of the Garden 

his mind. He professed to find matter of deep concern in the 
adjustment of the tripod, and awaited the newcomer’s approach 
with some uneasiness—for it was obvious she meant to speak 
to him. 

“. . . So you’ve come back,” he heard her say at length, 
in a low voice that fell upon his ears with a certain familiarity. 
“You haven’t forgot your promise!” At that he looked up 
from his fire with the ready smile which seldom failed him. 

“Yes . . . I’ve come back,” he answered, and could not 
restrain his curiosity from asking: “What promise was that?” 

“Promise you made me,” the girl told him. “Day before 
you left . . . i’ grass lane. After I’d gi’en ye cake. Don’t you 
remember me? Don’t you remember Thursday? Thursday 
Hardrip ?” 

Aye! It came back upon him now in a tide of swift and 
curiously troubled recollection. This girl must be the creature 
of dust and rags and matted hair who had persecuted him 
with her fidelities. But the transition between the slattern 
child of his remembrance and this figure of reality confronting 
him across the fire was so violent that all connection between 
the two remote identities seemed lost. A chasm unbridgeable 
by any effort of his mind divided them. Save for the fa¬ 
miliarity of the voice and a dim remembrance that the other 
creature’s deep and stedfast eyes had troubled him somewhat 
in the same way that this one’s did, the girl before him might 
have been a stranger rather than someone seen and known of 
old. The years had not conferred much height on George 
Hardrip’s lass. The head, profusely crowned with its coils 
of dark hair, might come perhaps on a level with Guy Open- 
shaw’s shoulder—no higher; but such stature as she owned 
was in accordance with her build. Without being sturdy, she 
showed compact, firm modelling beneath the blue serge skirt 
and light blouse, and her proportions were sufficiently har¬ 
monious to need no further inches for their justification. 
Of all these points, however, Guy Openshaw perceived nothing 
at this moment. He had been so studiously brought up in 


IIO 


The Tree of the Garden 

Mrs. Openshaw’s school of neo-chivalry as to close his eyes 
to all components of the sex, and no more permitted his glance 
to dwell intentionally upon the draped details of the form 
feminine, or wilfully to speculate upon its possibilities, than 
his knightly prototype would have stolen glances at the naked 
form of rescued womanhood. Busts and hips and all the 
battery of Venus pertained (Guy Openshaw was half success¬ 
ful in believing) to the past rather than the present; their only 
reputable place was in cold marble, where they lived harmless 
and sanctified; fires laid but not lighted, like the classics in a 
dead language, and were no more to be translated into terms 
of living flesh and blood than amorous Ovid or satiric Juvenal 
into the vulgar tongue. But if Guy Openshaw’s compunction 
restrained him from any analysis of female beauty, he was 
curiously susceptible to this beauty in its synthetic form. Deep 
eyes from which soft looks unclosed; the music of voices and 
the gentleness of words—all these things brought instantaneous 
trouble to his soul, clouding for awhile the clearness of his 
mind as when clouds darken water or breaths of wind stir its 
mirrored surface and break the placid images reflected in it. 
Such trouble, faintly suffocative, oppressed him now in the 
presence of George Hardrip’s lass, although his smile (ever 
his refuge in embarrassment) gave no index to the deeper 
feelings stirred beneath. He said: “Of course I remember 
you!”—and dropped his eyes upon the fire again, for the 
intentness of the girl’s gaze—the same intentness that had 
constrained him in the Whinsett forge—was more than (single- 
handed) he could endure. 

“You didn’t remember me this afternoon, though,” the girl 
taxed him. “Coming up road. Did you?”—and asked him: 
“Have I changed a deal?” 

He answered: ‘Yes!—that is to say, No! He could scarcely 
judge: it was so long since they had met.’ 

“You’ve changed,” the girl told him. “You’ve grown a 
lot taller than I expected. I didn’t think you’d grow as tall. 
But I should ’a known you anywheres. . . . I’se glad you’ve 


Ill 


The Tree of the Garden 

come. I’d begun to gie you up. I wouldn’t believe Dibner 
when he telt me you was coming back ti Whinsett!” 

It was the same voice, though deeper, that had spoken to 
him five years before, enquiring if he were “gannin wum,” 
and would he be glad “ti gan?” The Holderness accent 
clung tenaciously about it still, for all her words were more 
confidently uttered, with the obstinate subtlety of wine to the 
lips of one that has drunk of it, imbuing every word. To 
Guy Openshaw’s unpractised ears, long used to the stippled 
English of politeness, it had an effect of detracting from the 
girl’s beauty. Unconsciously he had assumed a change in 
speech corresponding with the change in her appearance, and 
this stubbornness of dialect surprised and perhaps a little dis¬ 
appointed him. True respecter of convention that his mother 
had sought to make him, the slightest shade of difference in 
accent, or departure from the standard prescribed by social 
Providence, was sufficient to bruise his finer sympathies, too 
easily wounded. And yet, despite the encouragement that Mrs. 
Openshaw had lent her son, he was no prig. His smile alone 
sufficed to rescue him from that. Perhaps, after all, in enter¬ 
ing this rude but friendly Whinsett element he resembled a 
swummer who flinches involuntarily at its first rude contact, 
but yet (in heart) knows himself a lover of the sea. 

All at once the girl withdrew something from her skirt 
pocket, that at first sight Guy Openshaw mistook for an 
envelope, and held it across the fire for his inspection. 

“See-ye!” she said. “Do you remember this?” She looked 
at him (he was aware) with a smile, displaying her white teeth 
that gleamed in the twilight like a miniature crescent moon. 
There w T as, for him, something curious and perplexing about 
the girl’s demeanour, as if it expressed a mutual significance, 
or bore testimony to much remembrance shared. The Misses 
Suddaby, who had lived in his intimate vicinity for many 
bygone weeks, renewed acquaintance with downcast heads and 
lowered eyes—as if he were somewhat more than a stranger. 
Whereas this girl, whom he only remembered by a few con- 


I I 2 


The Tree of the Garden 

strained encounters in the past, hung smiling now upon his 
friendliness as if she were possessed of a secret key to it. He 
had no recollection of the object shown to him. 

“It’s handkercher,” the girl informed him, shaking it out 
of fold for his inspection. “Hankercher you gi’ed me for a 
keepsake. Same hankercher you lent me night I fell off o’ 
cart on Plumpton hill. . . . Look!” she said; and stepping 
past the fire and laying thumb and forefinger on her cheek 
bone, she held this up to Guy Openshaw’s inspection, as a 
child might hold up its face for a kiss. “You can see mark 
still, if you look close.” And, indeed, Guy Openshaw descried 
a tiny sickle-shaped scar in the flesh demarked by thumb and 
forefinger, minute enough to be almost invisible in the twilight. 
But he saw, too, more than this. He saw the soft, smooth 
texture of the girl’s skin; the velvety profusion of her lashes; 
the liquid profundity of her dark eyes. And as he stooped 
there crept into his nostrils the soporific scent of fresh, warm 
flesh, that seemed to catch his breathing and disconnect his 
thoughts, for he withdrew his head abruptly from a proximity 
so intimate. 

“I’se kept hankercher,” the girl assured him, “ever sin’ you 
gi’ed it ti me, like I said I would. It’s been washed oftens 
and hung oot on hedge to bleach.” 

This relic and the tiny cicatrix upon her cheek appeared 
to constitute the girl’s patent of privilege, for after their 
production her tongue loosened. Guy Openshaw learned that 
she milked three cows and fed upwards of three score chickens, 
and drove to Dimmlesea in a light spring cart drawn by a 
fresh mare. Her grandfather was just aboot same as he 
always had been, she volunteered. Innumerable questions, too, 
she had to ask Guy Openshaw—questions as guilelessly direct 
as the statements volunteered about herself. Why had he not 
come to Whinsett sooner? How long was he going to stay? 
Whatever made him want to sleep in a tent? But the tent 
won her admiration when (at her request) he let her see 
inside it, and she discovered how perfectly it was appointed; 


”3 


The Tree of the Garden 

praising the little portable bed, the folding washstand and 
canvas bath, the collapsible bookcase and writing table, the 
aluminium cooking stove on which Guy Openshaw had already 
fried bacon and made omelettes in the shadow of the beech- 
trees at home; the nest of saucepans with detachable handles, 
all fitting snugly one within the other; the plate and cutlery; 
the reading lamp on the chest of drawers by Guy Openshaw’s 
pillow, where he could read on elbow if sleep failed him— 
in most of which particular comforts, together with the cork 
mats and fibre rugs, the hand of a loving mother was dis¬ 
cernible. Some ruder, manlier form of camping out had been 
the boy’s ideal, but the anxieties of Mrs. Openshaw had 
prevailed, first in this direction, then in that, to rob the outdoor 
life of its austerities and lend an air of almost luxury to his 
canvas home. One whole half side of this went up at will to 
form an awning in sunny weather, beneath which he might 
sit sheltered from the fierce beams of the sun. 

Yet, though George Hardrip’s lass paid minute respect to 
every object offered to her eyes, Guy Openshaw was uneasily 
aware that they dwelt, in most things and for the greater 
part, upon himself. Whatever she praised, whatever she noted, 
her gaze returned at once to him. Constraint had sat upon 
his words and actions, to be sure, when he displayed the con¬ 
tents of his hedgeside home to the Suddaby sisters; but that was 
a different emotion. It emanated from an effort to entertain his 
visitors—to discharge a courtesy with an air of ease—to rise 
to the heights of friendliness expected of him. But with this 
other visitor his constraint (he suddenly divined) was physical. 
The insistent wealth of hair, the deep looks flowing from these 
dark eyes, the smiles candid and cryptic that played over those 
soft lips, the gestures of those deft hands—caressful and ap¬ 
preciative—dominated him. Never before, in such complete 
seclusion, in such utter silence of Natures solitude, where 
(when their voices ceased he could hear the beating of his 
heart), had he stood in this close proximity to that sex of which 
he knew so little. To his troubled consciousness it seemed 


114 The Tree of the Garden 

like an essence volatile and suffocative, to fill the tent—to 
envelop his volition in a stifling atmosphere that robbed him of 
all ease and freedom. This was the sex, made poignant and 
importunate by much illicit knowledge learned at school— 
the sex made awful and mysterious by his mother’s reverence of 
it. Here, in his tent, conversing with him in curious under¬ 
tones of secrecy and friendship, as if (for all the world) no 
prodigious walls of insurmountable sanctity stood between 
them—here was the embodiment of all his noble aspirations 
and unworthy wonderings; of those dreadful conflicts between 
his worse and better natures; of lofty faith and pagan curiosi¬ 
ties. It was a relief to Guy Openshaw when his visitor, per¬ 
haps misreading his embarrassment for fatigue, declared she 
must be going. “He’ll be wondering what’s got me.” Some¬ 
thing of the old humility descended on her in taking leave, 
prompting her to ask in a voice of sudden concern: 

“Are ye vexed wi’ me?” 

“Vexed?”—the question took him by surprise. “What for?” 

“For me coming ti see you.” 

Now that she was really leaving him, and they stood once 
more in the fresh night air beneath the wider canopy of 
pearl-embroidered sky, Guy Openshaw’s recovered self-pos¬ 
session could afford to smile as brightly as before. 

“Indeed I am not.” 

“Are ye sure?” 

“Quite sure.” 

“Am I to come an see you again, some time?” 

“If you like.” 

“I’d like . . . Question is, would you like an’ all?” the 
girl remarked, with her deep eyes over his; and the son of 
Mrs. Openshaw—feeling his courtesy powerless in the coils 
of that pythonic gaze—answered with extreme politeness that 
he would. 

“Mebbe I s’ll come ti-morrow,” this curious girl informed 
him; “aboot same time . . . Dew’s falling. Feel o’ my 
hair!” She offered its luxuriousness to his touch, and Guy 


The Tree of the Garden 115 

Openshaw laid a trepid hand upon it. Whether it was dry 
or damp he knew not. All he knew was that it seemed 
wonderfully soft, and that, on contact with it, a swift and 
curious current flashed through his hand and outstretched arm. 
The next moment, with a commingling of “good nights” the 
girl was gone. In the pellucid stillness Guy Openshaw could 
hear the Hardrip dog barking betrayal of her return, and the 
clash of the little wooden gate on which, five years before, her 
figure had leaned beseechfully in vain attendance on his fare¬ 
well smile. The dog’s challenge was caught up by other ears 
alertly pricked in distant farmsteads, and for awhile there 
was an epidemic of barking, growing fainter and fainter with 
increasing space. If only Guy Openshaw’s ears had been 
keen enough he might have followed the disturbance as far as 
Dimmlesea, and doubtless wonderfully farther, in its radiation 
from the centre of alarm. One distant watchdog within ear¬ 
shot, more truculent and voiceful than the rest, challenged 
silence for awhile, as though insisting on the last word; but 
the other sentinels lay unresponsive on their paws, and the 
challenger grew mute in turn. From the belt of trees en¬ 
circling Suddaby’s, an owl pitched her lugubrious note. Guy 
Openshaw lit his lamp, for though the sky was eager still 
with midsummer light, and the pallid stars seemed quenched 
in the beams that would brighten to an early dawn, the dusk 
lay heavy on all earthly things. 

Only when the girl was gone, giving Guy Openshaw respite 
from the pressure of her deep eyes and the trouble of his 
own emotions, did he begin to reflect at length and leisure on 
the wonder of her coming. 

Five long years had passed since he used to steal along the 
fields and hedgerows as a boy, fearful of every snap of twig 
and crackle of dried leaf that might prelude the apparition 
of this girl. Whatever else of old association he came to seek 
at Whinsett, here at least was a chapter he had believed 
(and hoped) for ever closed. And lo! all at once this half- 
forgotten girl walked back into his life as though five years 


116 The Tree of the Garden 

were but a single night, casting her influence over him again 
like the meshes of a net, that seemed to be of gossamer, and 
yet possessed the tensile strength of steel. He scarcely knew, 
at first, whether to be amused or apprehensive. That his old 
boyish fear of her was for ever put aside he knew. And yet, 
vaguer misgivings crept into his mind, mingled with curious 
sensations, that part elated, part depressed him. Now that 
the girl was gone, he tried to recall those details of her 
appearance which his eyes had so stubbornly resisted, and 
succeeded but imperfectly. The vague remembrance of a 
beauty, daunting his courage to look at, lingered about the 
corridors of his mind. He was sensible of a certain physical 
intoxication without a cause; of a desire for movement, as if 
(for very little) he could have walked to Spraith and back; 
leaping stiles and hedges on the way. All at once, too, the 
wonder of Whinsett—as when the moon emerges out of the 
leaden coffer of the sea—was reborn in him, growing in 
intensity like the moon’s own light, and lending the enchant¬ 
ment his soul had lacked before. Sipping his hot milk and 
munching the Suddaby cheese-cakes, he thought with renewed 
tenderness upon the Suddaby kitchen and its amicable con¬ 
fusion of tongues. Those were good old times, be sure, when 
(lagging third in line) he hoed with Allison and Dibner, and 
spat (as they did) on his blistered hands, and hacked bel¬ 
ligerently at the rank runch. He could almost enjoy a 
spell of the heroic exercise again, following the sun-baked, 
clay-cracked rows with nose to ground looking up for a sight 
of the sun only at the field end. He rehearsed himself in his 
long disused vocabulary of the soil, to see how much he could 
remember: “Skellet, kelter, gare, rig, skep, teng, beward, 
gleg, trod, yune, yat, yet, and yam!” The words came back 
upon him, with friendliness, like old school-fellows. “Bee- 
drink, bramble-cake, semper, cruds and yal!” Oh! he would 
be very happy here. His heart, glowing out of its solitude 
on a sudden, turned impulsively towards its new surroundings, 
as a child—long time distrustful—takes hold at last of the 


The Tree of the Garden 117 

hand extended to it, through the instinctive need to bestow and 
partake of affection. The sea whispered at his feet. He saw 
lights out upon the water, pin-pricked in its obscurity like 
lesser stars. He heard the ghostly clank of chains; the creak 
of rigging; the thrum of far-away screws, churning the Hun 
fairway or throbbing in open sea; the foggy notes of steamers 
about to thread their outlet through the labyrinth of docks at 
Grimethorpe and breast the plashing waters of the river. A 
peggy-whitethroat burst into voluble song out of the thick¬ 
ness of the hedge that screened him; a fleldmouse shrilled in 
the grass; from time to time some flittermouse’s high harmonic 
squeak pierced the night air like a needle, above the buttery 
bush. The rhythmic cropping of complacent cattle, the cough 
and bleat of sheep, the great breaths from broad muzzles, 
blowing their enquiry of the herbage—all these reached Guy 
Openshaw and wove about him their web of sympathy and 
wonder. But whether they drew their inner meaning from 
the memory of George Hardrip’s lass, or lent their music to 
her face, Guy Openshaw knew not. He knew at least that 
this face was bewilderingly entangled in the texture of his 
thoughts, from which no effort could extricate it; and it was 
to the low cadence of her voice and the vision of her deep 
dark eyes that he fell asleep at last. 

6 

Only old men apply the dwindling remnant of their years 
to seek the philosopher’s stone. Youth already has it. Nor 
does man note its loss until his flowering time be over and 
his fruit of bitter wisdom set—that ripening burden of ex¬ 
perience which cumbers his autumn branches and weights 
him down upon his walking stick like Suddaby’s Whinsett 
Sweeting at the south end of the orchard, that is beautiful 
with coral bloom in May, and has to be propped up on 
crutches as if it were a cripple in September. But O! for 
youth’s blossom, sweetening and beautifying the world it 


118 The Tree of the Garden 

blows in; for perpetual power to wreathe one’s life with 
fragrant soft illusions, so that no petal be shaken, nor bough 
laid bare, nor fruit of wisdom pull us to the sward. 

In a few hours of not too heavy slumber—for even through 
the soundest of it Guy Openshaw was never altogether un¬ 
aware of the novelty of his surroundings; lulled not quite 
to sleep by waves that lipped the shore, and scenting the 
fibrous odours that crept out of the crushed turf through the 
floor-board beneath his bed, and drawing into his lungs the 
dew-chilled sea-freshened air, and made alert by the rub-a-dub 
of captive moths that beat their restless wings against his 
canvas with a sound like the ruffle of distant drums, or 
startled by the stertorous cough of cattle as they chewed 
the cud, with the distinctness of fellow sleepers—for all they 
might be three closes away; and disturbed by that mysterious 
inhalation of the tent when it filled its lungs as if some 
unseen presence had invaded it to stand beside his bed . . . 
in a few hours of delectable and variegated sleep such as this, 
Guy Openshaw rose from his pillow with the complete 
refreshment of youth. 

The grass and the clumps of gorse and bramble, and the 
hedgerows rendered fragile with the fragrant delicacy of wild 
roses, were dewy grey, as if a veil of finest lawn were spread 
upon them. Everywhere the birds were pushing wet and busy 
bills through the drenched grass; indefatigable feeders of 
families, most of them, with nestfuls of insatiable beaks to 
fill. The level sea lay sleek as satin, void of a crease, save 
where the faintest ripples rose to reach the shore. 

Mounting breast to breast with the ascendant sun, he 
sauntered slowly along the cliff, in the divine freshness of 
the early dawn, that might have been some morning plucked 
from the pellucid bosom of antiquity. The wandering cuckoo 
was a-wing, gulls passed northward, floating serenely on the 
air as if it had been water; great bees bumbled about his 
head; the grass tussocks, when his shoe caught them, spilled 
pearls and amethysts and glittering diamonds. From the 


The Tree of the Garden 119 

Fothom high lands be looked back upon Whinsett’s red bricks 
and weathered tiles, softened indulgently in the burnless sun¬ 
light. Out of the crooked chimney, about whose stack the 
nesting starlings piped and fluted, a pallid streak of smoke 
crept skyward. Already Suddaby’s voice had intoned the 
Litany of Christian names up the steep, dark staircase, chim¬ 
ney-hot, and had set ablaze the wisp of straw and the scuttle¬ 
ful of warm yune-dried kindling laid out by Lartle Jessie 
overnight. Other chimneys, too, in turn, began to breathe 
their early morning prayer, sending up their tranquil smoke to 
heaven like a supplication. Gates clashed and buckets rattled. 
These signs of human activity put Guy Openshaw in motion 
once again. He retraced his steps along the cliff, past where 
his white pavilion snuggled against its curtain of green elder, 
crossed the stile on which George Hardrip’s lass had first 
revealed herself last night, and strolled as far as Whinsett 
Magna, with intent to take the grass lane back to Suddaby’s 
for his eggs and morning milk. 

Pursuing the cliff path no farther northward, he picked 
up the highway and turned inland to Suddaby’s. Memory 
had so magnified the length of the grassy lane he followed, 
and Time’s own hand had so curtailed it, that he stood upon 
the Whinsett high road before he was aware, and had stopped 
to ask himself whose was this unremembered dwelling with 
its ostensible new storey of red bricks and grey slate, when 
the thought flashed upon him that this must surely be George 
Hardrip’s cottage of old, with its thatch cut off as clean as 
Allison Marriot’s hair. Yes! that was the old gate, rehung 
and new painted, whose sneck he had heard announce the girl’s 
return last night; but the clematis over the door, and the blood 
red and yellow wallflowers that threw their sweetness far 
beyond the garden palings bore testimony to a new spirit of 
interest and care. Five years ago he would have hastened 
from this place of peril to his peace of mind without a back¬ 
ward look, and drawn no breath until he reached the paddock 
stile, and saw the dairy window give him its assurance across 


120 


The Tree of the Garden 

the duckpond. But this morning no such fears assailed him. 
He viewed George Hardrip’s cottage with a charmed and 
friendly eye. He even wondered what his curious visitor of 
last evening might now be doing. Nay, there was even more 
in his wondering than that. He thought, for instance, what 
a strange thing it would be if she were to show herself just 
now, so that memory might be refreshed with the sight of her, 
and they might exchange a greeting before he went his way. 
And as if in answer to his thoughts the girl appeared, coming 
into the sunlight out of the soft void of the cowshed door. 

7 

She bore a milk pail in her right hand, holding forth her 
left in counterpoise, and throwing out her left hip as if the 
weight of what she carried were considerable. Her unexpected 
presence, though it acted instantly on the spectator’s heart and 
made his pulse beat faster, seemed to lend an aiming point to 
the sun’s beams, that kindled her at once to the intensity of flame 
and brightened the brick wall behind her. The apparition of 
Guy Openshaw took her by surprise, for her eyes fastened 
on him incredulously at first, but straightway she set down her 
pail—surmounted with its snowy foam—and gave him the 
welcome of her smile. 

“I’se milking!” she explained, partly offering for his notice 
and partly holding from it the evidences of her deshabille. Her 
arms were bare to the elbow. The figured print frock that 
had once been a bright and animated blue was faded now by 
rain and sun and washtub to an uncertain heliotrope, patched 
in places and short enough to confess an age outgrown. The 
low neckband was left unhooked, falling away in a V cleft 
that frankly acknowledged the gentle contours of the girl’s 
bosom, and the white camisole threaded with a pale blue ribbon 
that rose and sank above it. Beneath the over-shortness of her 
faded frock her legs, firmly but femininely modelled, insinu¬ 
ated their shape through the coarseness of worsted stockings 


I 21 


The Tree of the Garden 

before they disappeared into farm boots ostensibly too big for 
her, whose green and gleaming leather bespoke much early 
trampling in the wet straw of mistal and pighouse. 

Essentially here was the creature of draggled skirts that had 
so stirred Guy Openshaw’s antipathies five years before, and 
yet—how vast a difference can lurk between dust and dust. 
Her very freshness, this morning, condoned the slattern in her ; 
her coarse boots with the dung and ordure clinging to them 
no more sullied the natural fragrance of her flesh than the 
soil about the roots of a flower infects its purity. Guy Open- 
shaw was surprised to find how much his observation or his 
memory had failed him in regard to the girl’s face. He had 
always thought of her, and even reperceived her in his tent 
last night, as a brunette with olive skin. But now, lit by the 
morning sun, he realised that her flesh was almost fair. The 
hair, too, that he had so long accounted black, was in reality a 
deep rich brown, overshot with an auburn shimmer, suggesting 
hidden strands of bronze and gold; and the seeming darkness 
of the girl’s eyes derived from the heavy lashes fringing them, 
for their irises were of a deep reticulated grey, verging on 
violet. The hollow under her throat caught the sun side¬ 
ways, and held a little shadow-pool of blue purple; under her 
lower lip was just such another pool, deepening the smile that 
curled it. Her chin was rosy; her cheeks slightly flushed; her 
glance liquid-bright, as though, like this morning’s flowers, the 
eager dew lay in it. 

If Guy Openshaw’s senses (unreliable as they were, for all 
his effort to control them) had failed to register this picture 
of early morning beauty, some fluid feebler than warm blood 
must have flowed in his inelastic veins. The girl’s rich hair, 
carelessly coiled, had come unfastened in the act of milking, and 
fell down upon her shoulder as she stood. She swept it back 
from her brow with a brown hand and milk white forearm, and 
secured it in a coil as careless as before. 

‘‘Hair’s a nuisance!” she said. “Look at it. I se not had 
time ti do it yet. I’se been agate sin’ four . . . and asked 


122 


The Tree of the Garden 

Guy Openshaw, in a voice tinctured with hope: “Did you 
walk here o’ purpose ti see me?” He could not, even for 
politeness’ sake, gratify so dangerous a question with falsehood, 
but he went so far as to remark: “I thought perhaps . . . 
I might.” “I was just thinking about you as I cam’ oot o’ 
shade,” the girl confided. “Can you guess what I was think¬ 
ing about? I was thinking o’ bringing you a drink o’ fresh 
milk as far as tent. Should you ’a been vexed if I had ’a 
done?” 

Although the contemplated act of generosity suggested a 
train of curious considerations to so correct a mind as Guy 
Openshaw’s, he made haste to thank George Hardrip’s lass for 
her thoughtfulness. Of course he would not have been vexed. 
It was more than kind of her to think of him. 

“Would you ’a supped it?” the girl enquired. “Do you 
like fresh milk of a morning?” In her eagerness to offer him 
this cherished hospitality she barely awaited his reply, but 
begged him: “Wait of me a moment, while I’se ta’en this pail 
i’ dairy and siled you a glassful. Don’t walk away. I wean’t 
be gone a minute.” In point of fact she was less than that, 
returning with a fresh pail slung over her arm and bearing in 
one hand a quartered curd-cake on a white plate, and in the 
other a fat tumbler filled with creamy milk, which it was plain 
to see she regarded with eyes of pride and care. Once she 
spilled a trickle of the soft warm fluid over the flush rim, and 
bit her underlip with a smiling self-reproof, telling Guy Open¬ 
shaw: “I’se trying to look ower sharp. Glass is full. Maybe 
you’d best sup top off.” She watched him drink with eyes 
intent to lose no vestige of his appreciation. Even before he 
had released the tumbler from his lips she asked him: “Do 
you like it?” and Guy Openshaw rejoined, “It’s lovely!” 
Encouraged by which commendation she offered him the curd- 
cake in turn. She had caught sight of it (she said) on dairy 
shelf, and thought maybe . . . Did he care for curds ? Anxious 
to redeem himself from the least sign of reluctance to accept 
her fare, Guy Openshaw took a quartering of the crusted curd 


123 


The Tree of the Garden 

and bit into its sweetness with an alacrity that confessed the 
perpetual hunger of youth. “You can eat it i’ coo-shade along 
o’ me,” George Hardrip’s lass suggested, “while I’se milking. 
If you like,” she added with an afterthought of humility that 
drew from Guy Openshaw the instant assurance: “I’d love 
to.” “Mind yon coo-clap again door,” she warned the visitor— 
a warning rendered not untimely by the darkness of the place, 
that seemed for awhile like Cimmerian gloom after the radi¬ 
ance of the sun. 

The old familiar Whinsett cow-smell went up his nostrils, 
warm and aromatic. His ears heard the ruttling of the great 
bellies and the lethargic rolling of the cud; the rubbing of 
chains through crib-rings; the mighty coughs, startling in their 
suddenness; the vast heaved sigh. Three of the cows, two 
already milked, lay down upon their bedding, their flanks loom¬ 
ing like rocks, their tails indolently alash as they chewed. The 
fourth was on her feet, stamping an impatient hoof and polish¬ 
ing her horns against the crib in the way Suddaby wields the 
“bulstone” when he whets his scythe. Through the louvred 
shutters the sunlight made a grill of gold, whose bars fell 
obliquely on the foremost cow, illuminating the great pink- 
tinged udders that lay flaccid on the yellow straw and kindling 
the straw itself as if the next moment it must burst into flame. 
Inside the shed George Hardrip’s lass pointed to her cows with 
a pride scarce inferior to Suddaby’s; gave Guy Openshaw their 
names and characters, with the quantity of milk each yielded. 
“Yon fourth’s wi’ calf,” she said, “ti Garforth bull. I’se dry¬ 
ing her off.” On the sleek brown flanks of the third she slapped 
her hand, crying “Lucy!” in her cow-shed voice. The stolid 
quarters moved cumbrously aside to give her passage, and she 
slipped into milking posture with her three-legged stool and 
pail. A hen, scared out of concealment, flung herself clamor¬ 
ously from the manger to the door, and fled incontinently from 
the intruders. As the noise of her distracted flight died down 
Guy Openshaw heard the first trial rinsings of the milk against 
the pail side, for there is no practised milker but begins by 


I2 4 


The Tree of the Garden 

stropping all the teats in turn, to make sure they are well tuned, 
as a fiddler tries his four strings. Then, with her temple 
pressed against the soft warm belly, George Hardrip’s lass 
began to milk. She had the rapt look of a harpist, plucking 
music from the tremulous strings of milk that quivered in 
alternate spurts into the pail between her knees. At times the 
rinsings rang loud and martial against the metal with a hint of 
cymbals; at times they cleft the rising froth with a deeper 
note, and Guy Openshaw caught tunes almost recognisable in 
their variations. For the most part she milked with lowered 
lashes, that lay upon her cheek and lent her flushed face the 
inward semblance of a seer, her wrists rising and falling with 
mesmeric regularity; but now and again she stopped with a 
bright upward smile, to regulate the bucket between her knees, 
or draw her smooth forearm across her brow, or cry “Noo, 
Lucy!” when the cow raised a threatening hoof or stamped 
the straw. She did not, in her milking, follow the fashion of 
Suddaby, who crouches to the cow’s udder on his heels, like a 
poacher at a rabbit-hole, buttressing himself with the crown 
of his head against the beast’s ribs, but she sat to her work on 
the tilted three-legged stool; and as this brought her shoulders 
very low and her knees high, the posture offered more leg and 
feminine backbone to Guy Openshaw’s inspection than he had 
ever viewed at such close quarters in his life. Even through 
the heroic efforts of his chivalry to disregard the obvious, he 
was intently conscious of the gleaming of the girl’s shoulder 
and the ripple of vertebrae where the flexible spine slipped 
down below the shelter of her faded frock into that dim seclu¬ 
sion which was, for the spectator, holy ground. Five years 
ago such frank confession of the girl’s flesh would have roused 
in him a feeling of repugnance akin to animosity. This morn¬ 
ing, though the unrestrained disclosure of her limbs perturbed 
him secretly, his eyes were troubled haunters of what they 
sought so assiduously not to see. For, despite himself, they took 
advantage of the girl’s dropped lashes to steal a surreptitious 
glance at the once suspected neck, of such torture to his cleanly 


The Tree of the Garden 125 

rectitude of old. Where the thick brown hair rested on it, 
loosely tied, the flesh was tinted by the sun to the hue of ripened 
corn, but it bleached before it reached her open neckband and 
passed out of sight with the ivory whiteness of one of his hair¬ 
brushes. The white wonder of its texture a little awed him, 
and he recovered his errant eyes with the blush for a delin¬ 
quency convicted. At the same time the girl lifted her lashes 
and dropped her fingers to the pail edge. 

“I can’t scarcelins mek myself believe it’s true!” she said, 
so irrelevantly that Guy Openshaw (uncertain if her glance 
had not been too quick for his own) could only ask uneasily 
what it was she found such difficulty in believing. 

“That you’ve come back ti Whinsett after all!” she told 
him. “And’s stood i’ cowshade wi’ me. I keeps thinkin’ I must 
be dreaming it.” 

To Guy Openshaw there seemed nothing so extraordinary 
in the circumstance as to oppose great difficulties to belief. 
“Really?” was all the comment he could make. 

“I’se to keep looking at ye,” she continued in her lowered, 
more earnest voice, “to mek sure it’s you. Do you mind me 
looking at ye?” the girl inquired unexpectedly. “You did 
when you was here before, I know. But do ye now ?” He 
minded rather much, in fact, and felt a sense of growing con¬ 
straint to be held long under the scrutiny of her deep eyes, but 
he answered with all the nonchalance he could assume: “Not 
at all. ...” 

Perhaps the girl divined through the deceptive confidence of 
his reply something of the deeper uneasiness stirred in him 
by her prolonged regard, for she broke the look of concentra¬ 
tion and asked him in a lighter voice: “Can you milk?’ 

“Not much.” 

“Have you ever tried?” 

“Once or twice, when I was here before; but I never made 
much headway.” 

“Who showed ye? Suddaby lasses? 

“No! Suddaby showed me.” 


126 


The Tree of the Garden 

“Which way did he show ye?” 

“I thought there was only one way.” 

“There’s dry stroppers an’ wet stroppers,” George Hard- 
rip’s lass explained. “Wet stroppers dips their finger-ends 
i’ milk-pail an’ keeps tit slape. Mebbe if they’ve gotten rough 
hands or milks ower hard it dizn’t chafe coo as bad. But it’s 
a dirty way. I alius milks dry—like this”—and she drew a 
couple of deft spurts into the pail with the lightest of fingers. 
“Would you like to try? See! Tek stool. Coo’s quiet. I’ll 
show ye if you like.” As she had risen from her place, not 
waiting for Guy Openshaw’s acceptance, he seated himself 
without demur, spreading his long legs under the cow’s bulk 
with the pail between his knees. Something of the old false 
delicacy of youth came back upon him, that caused his fingers 
to flinch from contact with the fleshy dugs. The warmth of 
the cow’s round belly invested him like the heat diffused from 
a kitchen range on baking day, and the pail of new-drawn 
milk glowed warm between his knees; but more insistent and 
disturbing was the human warmth emanating from the girl 
who crouched beside him. Her soft shoulder kept close com¬ 
panionship with his own; her bare arms crossed his; her 
fingers closed upon his fingers in the task of demonstration. 
“See! tek hod like this. Don’t nip; just stroke tit gently. 
Milk’ll come. She’s easiest coo of ’em all ti strop.” It may 
be he had no natural aptitude for milking; perhaps the insist¬ 
ent proximity of the girl’s body—whose warmth invaded his 
blood and dispossessed it, so that he had no other thought than 
the tremendous consciousness of her—of her bare arms and 
bosom and white neck and dense soft hair and the upturned 
smile that made continuous call upon his own . . . 

. . . Perhaps all this served but to dull the edge of aptitude 
and cause his fingers to be clumsy. Once, turning his glance 
upon George Hardrip’s lass, it slipped through inadvertence 
to such a depth in the profundity of her unguarded bosom that 
his very blood leaped back with horror, as from an act of sacri¬ 
lege. Those disconcerting contours, swiftly seen, clung to his 


The Tree of the Garden 127 

guilty eyes with a tenacity that made the shapes he handled yet 
more troublous to the touch. “You tug ower hard,” the girl 
instructed him. She gave a quick stroke to what his fingers 
squeezed so awkwardly. “See! Coo’s not hodding her milk. 
It comes as free as free.” But no flow rewarded Guy Open- 
shaw’s efforts. The cow looked round with a large and won¬ 
dering eye at these ineffectual intimacies with her person, and 
slashed a protesting tail about the intruder’s ears, but not one 
drop replied to the cajoleries of his unpractised hand. Guy 
Openshaw laughed confession of defeat at last, and rose from 
his inglorious labour. “It’s use!” the girl told him. “You’d 
milk as well as anybody after awhile, wi’ syke soft fingers. 
I only wish mine was as soft an’ white as yours. See! you’ve 
nobbut to do like this!”—and set to work with her supple 
wrists once more, evoking alternate spurts of pale fluid with 
such dexterous precision and rapidity that they formed a cur¬ 
rent almost continuous against the pail side. As the froth 
mounted, s© that the spurts were ultimately smothered in it, 
her colour deepened; her lips parted with a quickened breath¬ 
ing; her neck grew gleaming bright, and rows of tiny pearls 
stood out upon her brow. “It’s warm work,” she confided 
to Guy Openshaw when at last she brought her labour to a 
close and wiped her brow and neck with a corner of the uplifted 
skirt. She pushed the cow’s encroaching flanks aside with a 
flat hand and rose from the tilted stool. The brisk rub had 
left her flesh rosy; the blood was in her lips; her eyes looked 
larger and more limpid; the tiny scar upon her cheek-bone 
defined itself faintly. “Look!” she said, offering the snowy 
produce for Guy Openshaw’s laudation. “That’s summut for 
yan coo ti give! Just feel weight o’ pail.” Their heads, in 
the transfer, came so close together that the girl’s hair touched 
Guy Openshaw’s cheek. Momentarily he descried her eyes 
very large and round, and her teeth very white, and her lips 
and ear-lobes burning red; for a beam of sunlight through the 
shutter fell upon them—all blurred and magnified like the page 
of a coloured picture-book that a child holds pressed to its nose. 


128 


The Tree of the Garden 

A subtle fragrance as of warm milk rose from the girl’s flesh 
and brought back palpitating recollections of last night; more 
especially as she did not all at once release the bucket, but held 
him linked to her by that and by a gaze which seemed to 
promise no immediate liberation. Guy Openshaw almost 
imagined that her upturned lips had something to petition or 
confide, but all at once a shadow absorbed the sunlight beyond 
the doorway, and the figure of old Hardrip darkened the cow¬ 
shed. Beyond uttering an unintelligible sound that Guy Open¬ 
shaw supposed must be intended for the girl’s name, he vouch¬ 
safed no explanation of his presence, but propped himself with 
a hand against the door-post and peered into the dimness be¬ 
yond ; his head and nether lip shaking tremulously, as if with 
the concentrated strain of vision. The girl said: “I’se here!” 
Guy Openshaw maintained an awkward silence, not knowing 
what form of greeting might be appropriate to the newcomer, 
who scrutinised him sourly through his imperfect eyes, after 
knuckling the water from them, without, however, deriving 
much apparent satisfaction from their use, for he enquired in a 
voice as rough as one of the blacksmith’s rasps: “Who’s yon 
thoo’s gotten i’ shade wi’ thee?” The girl responded: “It’s 
Mr. Openshaw”—and the name fell somewhat bruisingly on 
the owner’s pride. But the farmer made no acknowledgment 
beyond a grunt that for all its intelligibility might have been 
emitted by one of his own pigs; pushed himself away from the 
door and shambled slowly onward, making place for the sun¬ 
light once again. Some shadow of mortification must have 
fallen on Guy Openshaw’s face, to be thus trapped and scruti¬ 
nised with such disfavour by a rascal of old Hardrip’s reputation, 
for the girl touched his sleeve with a hand of supplication, beg¬ 
ging: “Don’t tek notice of him; he’s same ti everybody; he 
wean’t say nought ti ye; it’s his way.” Thus invoked by lips 
and eyes that—however much they troubled self-possession, 
made an irresistible appeal to his gallantry, Guy Openshaw 
assured George Hardrip’s lass “he didn’t mind.” “Are ye 


The Tree of the Garden 129 

sure?” the girl enquired doubtfully. “You’re not vexed wi’ me 
for getting you ti come an’ sit i’ coo-shade?” 

“Indeed I’m not. It was only too kind of you to ask me.” 

“You wean’t let him frighten ye?” the girl persisted. “You’ll 
come an’ see me again, won’t ye?” 

Perhaps Guy Openshaw’s response to this concluding suppli¬ 
cation, despite its cordiality, was vaguer than the girl desired, 
for she asked at once: “When will you come? Will you come 
again to-morrow? Say yes you will! I’ll wait milkin’ of ye.” 

Various forms of reply presented themselves in rapid alter¬ 
nation before Guy Openshaw’s uncertain mind. But brief 
though his hesitation was, it afforded time for something to die 
down in the girl’s face, like a light withdrawn from a window, 
and, instead, he gave the answer first supplicated by her eyes. 

“If you want me to ... I will.” 

“I do want ye to,” she assured him; and added, in a lowered 
voice of strange intensity, “If I was to try an’ tell ye . . . Nay, 
ye wouldn’t believe me—nobody would. Maybe I s’ll walk as 
far as tent again, after supper. Same as I did last night. Shall 
you be vexed wi’ me if I do? Would you liever I didn’t? 
I won’t come if you don’t want me. I’ll stop at wum. I’ll do 
aught you ask me to.” 

All of which curious sayings, with the deep look accompany¬ 
ing them, recurred to Guy Openshaw’s mind as he strolled on 
his way to Suddaby’s. And though he was not insensible of the 
growing weight of these renewed obligations towards George 
Hardrip’s lass, and asked himself with not a few misgivings 
whither he was being led, the supplicative beauty of her face 
haunted him, and melted all mere prudent thoughts which, 
without this solvent, might have hardened into practical and 
rigid resolutions. That face began to stir him powerfully, as 
some cherished new possession agitates the mind of its youthful 
owner: for ever importuning to be looked at. Again and 
again he must inspect the secret treasure with his inward eye, 
trying to reclaim in solitude the curious emotions stirred by it, 
to augment his intimacy with its features by private study. 


i3° The Tree of the Garden 

The memory of George Hardrip’s lass outlived his scruples, 
like an elation in the blood. He had only to recall the girl’s 
face, her neck, her arms, her smile, the warm pressure of her 
soft shoulder against his—and instantaneously the very sunlight 
brightened, the birds sang more ecstatically, the blue sky deep¬ 
ened to the intensity of the girl’s own gaze, enfolding him in a 
sort of rapture. And though, as night drew nearer, he antici¬ 
pated her coming with a nervousness bordering on trepidation, 
his old resistance to her power was for ever broken. She con¬ 
stituted the secret golden key to a new kingdom of the mind; 
a region of glorious perplexities and bewildering raptures 
unentered by the boy before. 


V 


I 

O N a Sunday evening Guy Openshaw took up his station 
by the cliff-stile in the Suddaby six-acre, and looked 
towards the grass lane with that peculiar anxiety, 
almost poignant, which invariably possessed him when expectant 
of George Hardrip’s lass. All day there had been portentous 
mutterings of thunder; leonine growlings rose at intervals 
from the waters of the Hun, and clouds of overwhelming 
majesty embattled the western sky, through whose loopholes 
the sun thrust beams of splendour that burnished fields of wheat 
to gold and gilded distant sails upon the leaden sea. A stag¬ 
nant air, over-warm, stirred languorously from time to time, 
heavy with commingled sweetness and the sad odour of unshed 
rain, bringing with it the sound of Beachington’s three bells, 
that stumbled tiredly across the countryside as though bowed 
beneath their own weight, and stirred Guy Openshaw’s heart 
with an inexplicable sense of solitude and wretchedness. 

Little more than a week had passed since first he renewed 
acquaintance with George Hardrip’s lass in this very field, but 
much of inward consequence had taken place since then. The 
friendship between the two had grown apace, involving far 
deeper springs of feeling in Guy Openshaw’s uneasy bosom 
than he dared as yet to acknowledge, even to himself. He 
struggled hard to keep this intimacy unentangled by the least 
avowal of personal liking, flattering himself their friendship 
was most purely platonic; an amicable sharing of mutual 
interests and pleasures that left the affections uncompromised 
and free. For his own comfort he sought to confuse his feel¬ 
ings for George Hardrip’s lass with his love of the pursuits she 

131 


132 


The Tree of the Garden 

symbolised, making believe he liked milking for its own sake, 
and not for hers—that the odours of byre and stable were sweeter 
in his nostrils than the fragrance wafted from the girl’s warm 
cheek, and that the cluck of poultry and cackle of complacent 
geese and squeal of pigs were sounds more dear to his ears than 
the softness of the girl’s voice. The milk drawn, he would 
charge himself with the portage of the pail to the Hardrip 
dairy—a small, dark chamber two steps deep, with a perforated 
zinc eye in the north wall. Compared with the Suddaby dairy, 
it was but a dungeon, offering inadequate accommodation for 
two human bodies, and leaving no space for the churn—that 
had to be manipulated on the back doorstone beneath the plum 
tree in fine weather, or in the kitchen when it rained. And he 
served the pigs in company with George Hardrip’s lass, as once 
he had done on a more ambitious scale with Suddaby, and drew 
water for her from the decrepit pump, that lurched unsteadily 
beneath the vigour of his youthful sweeps, and the girl gazed 
upon him as if he had been an angel from the Lord. Now and 
again the figure of George Hardrip darkened their vicinity like 
a passing cloud, as he shambled about his work in barn and 
make-shift foldyard, but no word or sign acknowledged recog¬ 
nition of the stranger. After the third day Guy Openshaw 
paid less heed to the taciturn old rascal than if he had been one 
of his own cattle, acting on the girl’s advice to “tek ni notice 
on him. He wean’t say nowt ti ye. It’s not oft he speaks ti 
onnybody.” 

At first, it is true, he strove to hold inviolate the secret of 
their friendship, believing with the ingenuousness of the town 
mind that their meetings passed unobserved. But secrets in 
the country are hard to keep. The very birds betray them; the 
hedgerows and coarse grasses whisper them to one another; 
the clash of gates and barkings of indiscreet dogs; the intent 
lifting of cow’s heads—all these are as voices and trumpets 
and words writ large. Before three days had passed the friend¬ 
ship of Guy Openshaw with George Hardrip’s lass was known 
to Whinsett. It formed a frequent theme of conversation in 


133 


The Tree of the Garden 

the Suddaby kitchen. The secret went as far as Plumpton, 
and the blacksmith’s wife besought her husband: “Thoo’ll gi’e 
me a call when lass gans by to-night, won’t thoo, Adam?” 

Her opinion, after two inspections—as the girl came and 
went—was favourable. 

‘‘Why! she’s a bonny-looking lass, Adam. As-sure I never 
realised it before. I’m not surprised he’s ta’en up with her. 
It’s only natural. I’d like to get a look at both of ’em together, 
some time.” 

If the blacksmith’s wife had only stepped as far as the top 
of the Plumpton hill when the girl drove home that evening, 
and looked through the sunlit elms, she might have gratified 
her uttered wish; for at the bottom of the road the figure of 
Guy Openshaw detached itself from the low parapet of the 
little bridge spanning the culvert, and sprang lightly into 
the Hardrip cart beside the girl. It was he who helped her 
to unyoke the mare, and bore her butter-baskets and groceries to 
the Hardrip door, and backed the spring-cart into its place 
beneath the cart-shed, and hung the harness on its pegs in the 
stable. George Hardrip being at this time seated heavily on 
the painted settle in the Plumpton inn, and not likely to be 
home till late, his granddaughter begged Guy Openshaw to 
“come i’side.” He would have given much for power to decline 
the invitation, for all the boy’s scruples shrank from entering 
this man’s house during his absence from it, and he objected 
feebly: “I think I must be getting back.” 

“Not yet,” the girl besought him; “don’t gan yet. I’ll set 
ye as far as tent when you do. Come i’side. Do! to please me. 
He wean’t be wum of another hour. Mebbe two.” 

As there was no valid objection that Guy Openshaw’s lips 
possessed the courage to protest, he followed Thursday Hard¬ 
rip into the parlour kitchen, where the inevitable fire—banked 
up in the grate to survive the girl’s long absence—glowed to 
the chimney’s throat and threw out rays of intolerable heat. 
The kitchen floor was red-tiled. Its vivid colouring proclaimed 
the care bestowed upon its ruddling no later than to-day; 


1 34 


The Tree of the Garden 

and the burnished steelwork of the range and fender bespoke 
the daily toil expended on it. A tall clock in an oaken case, 
whose brown woodwork was much bitten with the mildew of 
damp flags, hiccoughed unsteadily from one corner. Above the 
mantelpiece George Hardrip’s gun rested horizontally across 
two nails; his bentwood chair—larger even than Suddaby’s for 
the reception of his grosser body—stood by the chimney breast 
with a glazed spittoon beside it. In this chair George Hard- 
rip’s lass bade her reluctant visitor be seated, where the warmth 
of the burning coals contended with the heat of his own con¬ 
science. Every tick and hiccough from the clock tormented him 
with secret dread of the farmer’s return, and he sat uneasily 
upon the hard edge of the ashwood chair where often George 
Hardrip’s obese great body had subsided in drunken slumber, 
wondering to what end the girl had brought him here. She, 
doffing first her hat and coat, and calling on him to witness the 
disorder of her hair, that she adjusted rapidly by the reflection 
of a warped mirror before the kitchen window, made hurried 
journeys to and fro, saying: “I’se just setting supper things 
on table. I shan’t be a minute. Yon’s not him. Yon’s Gar- 
forth cart. He wean’t be wum of a long while. He’s alius 
late of a Saturday.” As she spoke and moved about the kitchen, 
often turning her face towards Guy Openshaw and tendering 
him the reassurance of her smile, as if to keep his interest 
engaged, preparations for the meal multiplied beneath her busy 
hands. She draped the table with a coarse but bleached white 
cloth; laid a shank of cold boiled ham upon it; pickles in a 
jar; cheese-cakes, spiced bread, cheese, and the inevitable 
“cruds.” Not until she drew from the fire a saucepan seething 
with boiled milk and cried “There! Noo it’s fit!” did Guy 
Openshaw perceive with a pang of consternation that all this 
labour had been expended for him—that but one place was set 
before the table end, where, from a white jug the hot milk sent 
up pale wreaths towards the darkened rafters. 

“You don’t mean to say that you’ve done all this for meV ’ 
he said. “I hadn’t the least idea. Oh, you shouldn’t . . . 


i35 


The Tree of the Garden 

really!” So much of trouble sounded in his voice that some 
shadow of it seemed to fall upon the girl’s face, slowly eclipsing 
the eagerness that brightened it so recently. She stood by the 
table with dropped, submissive arms. 

“Would you rather I hadn’t? ... I dursn’t tell you what 
I was doing. I was afraid if I said aught aboot it you’d ’a 
gone. You would ’a done, I know. Are you vexed wi’ me?” 

It was the old question, in the old voice, despondent and 
unresentful, that never failed to touch the finer chords of 
chivalry in Guy Openshaw’s nature; the old submissiveness 
of posture whose humility made his own pride seem a base and 
servile thing. He said instantly: 

“Indeed, I am not vexed with you. But I hate to ... to 
put you to so much trouble on my account. It is awfully kind 
of you . . . really!”—and came obediently to table with 
words of gratefulness and a troubled heart. There he stood 
irresolute before the one place set—the single glass, the lone 
plate, the solitary knife and fork—and said: “Where are you 
going to sit?” 

“I’se going ti stand by an’ wait on you,” George Hardrip’s 
lass replied. “It’s rare I sits down ti table wi’ him. Women 
dizn’t eat wi’ men i’ country. I expect Suddabys dizn’t. They 
sits down ti their meat before—or after, when men’s been 
served.” But this Guy Openshaw would not permit. 

“I won’t touch anything,” he said conclusively, “unless you 
sit down and take your supper with me.” 

“Won’t you?” the girl said, visibly stirred by such shining 
courtesy, and yet surrendering her cherished servitude with 
reluctance. “I’se not hungry. Maybe if you wasn’t here I 
should ’a nought but a sup o’ milk last thing, or a piece o’ 
crud.” Nevertheless at his behest she set a second plate beside 
her visitor, saying she couldn’t believe it was him set there, not 
yer her, and if she’d thought he wouldn’t ’a ta’en his meat 
wi’oot her, she’d nivver ’a dared ti ask him. 

To say that Guy Openshaw enjoyed this strange and unex¬ 
pected meal would be a wilful misinterpretation of his feelings. 


136 The Tree of the Garden 

He masticated food that tasted of nothing, and drank milk 
whose hotness seared his lips and throat; and talked with the 
lass beside him, and listened ever through the inexorable ticking 
of the clock for those lurching footsteps that should announce 
the farmer’s dread return. When shrinking conscience thought 
upon his mother, and pictured the horror of her countenance 
at the bare idea of conduct such as this, he felt as if he had 
betrayed her confidence and love. Only one thing sustained 
him. Only one reality remained, like a star in heaven, shining 
serenely above the grotesque phantasm of his surroundings and 
the sky-wrack of his thoughts. That was the girl. 

Yet certain it is that this strange meal, curiously com¬ 
pounded of constraint and formal informality, served to deepen 
the sense of comradeship between Guy Openshaw and George 
Hardrip’s lass. The heat of the kitchen, at first intolerable, 
died down to a friendly summer warmth as these two sat and 
talked, with the table leg between them, and Guy Openshaw’s 
first violent apprehension of the farmer’s return relapsed into a 
comfortable disregard of time, lulled by the girl’s face and the 
torpid ticking of the clock. Not until it struck interminable 
eleven at last—growling out the hours as if the night would 
not be long enough to tell them in—did Guy Openshaw 
jump to his feet. The girl said: “I’ll set ye back as far as 
tent . . . ”—but this he would not have, and she subscribed 
to his objection with the remark: “Maybe I’d best stop where 
I is, noo, and get things sided.” 

After a moment she asked him, in her lowered voice: “When 
shall I be seeing ye again ? Ti-morrow’s Sunday. I shall have 
all evening ti mysen as soon as I’se gotten milked. Will ye gan 
for a walk wi’ me?” 

Guy Openshaw had not contemplated the morrow without 
vague misgivings as to what might be expected of him on such 
a festal, public day, when all the countryside kept tryst; but 
the proposal took him, notwithstanding, by surprise. He said 
uneasily: “A walk?” and asked: “Where to?” The grand¬ 
daughter of George Hardrip let fall her lashes on her cheek 


i37 


The Tree of the Garden 

before replying. “Anywheres you like,” she answered; “any¬ 
wheres that folks teks walks to. Along cliff top; by laneway 
if you’d liever; or across fields.” 

He said evasively: “I fancy it’s going to rain.” 

“It wean’t fall a deal,” she answered him. “Mebbe we s’li 
get a sup, wi’ thunner; but sea’ll tek most on it. Will you?” 

He wrestled for a moment with his feelings, that were all 
in conflict, and answered impotently: “If you like, I will.” 

“Don’t you like, an’ all?” the girl asked him. “I oughtn’t 
tiv ’a asked you, I know. Nor I shouldn’t ’a dared tiv ’a done 
if you’d said ‘No’ ti supper. It’s for lasses ti wait while they’re 
asked, but I was afraid you wouldn’t ask me. Maybe you’d 
liever not let folk see ye tekking walks wi’ me. I should feel 
same, mebbe, if I was you.” 

The argument of humility prevailed. He dropped at once 
the weapon of his pride that dealt such wounds to this sub¬ 
missive, yet insistent, spirit; protesting she had utterly misread 
his thoughts. 

“Shall you gan wi’ me because you want ti gan wi’ me?” 
George Hardrip’s lass persisted, “or is it just because I’se asked 
you, and you don’t like ti hurt my feelings?” 

He answered: “Because I want to go with you.” 

In the tremulous evening light the girl looked long and 
deeply at his eyes. 

“I only wish I could believe it!” she said at last. “If I’d any 
pride . . . maybe I shouldn’t trouble ye. I’se naught ti you, 
I know; but you’re summit ti me. I can’t explain myself. 
Very like you wouldn’t want me to. There’s things I’d like 
ti say and dursn’t. What time shall I come up ti tent for you ? 
Will six o’clock be ower early?” 

Six o’clock, Guy Openshaw agreed, would suit him very 
well. He would await her coming by the stile in the six-acre. 
As he turned to go, the girl’s hand groped out to his and closed 
upon it with a shy pressure at once urgent and supplicative. 
The act recalled to Guy Openshaw’s memory the warm insist* 
ence of the dog’s mute muzzle, pushed persuasively into his 


138 The Tree of the Garden 

palm in the early days of his sojourn at Whinsett; but it stirred 
him more profoundly. He knew not what it portended or 
besought, although his heart beat furiously. Dim thoughts, 
haunting thoughts, terrific thoughts assailed him, for her face 
seemed strangely near; but these he put resolutely aside. In¬ 
stead, he took the hand within his own and shook it to the 
accompaniment of last “Good night.” All the way back to 
his tent the memory of this procedure troubled him with a sense 
of its futility and inconclusiveness, as if some vital question had 
been left unsolved. And it troubled him more deeply when he 
turned his thoughts towards the morrow, and asked what new 
and strange developments this creeping friendship would un¬ 
fold. The shadow of a vague fear oppressed his conscience, for 
ever disappearing when he sought to face and fix it. 

2 

As he leaned against the stile in Suddaby’s six-acre he was 
cowardly enough to pray for rain. But none fell. The inky 
bastions of cloud his prayer relied on rolled out to sea, charged 
with indistinct mutterings, and taking his hopes of respite with 
them. The sun shone from a blue tract of uncontested sky, 
pouring his mellow rays upon a gilded countryside, hung round 
on every horizon with curtains of deep sable. The rain would 
not be yet, for all a giant gooseflesh crept over the earth from 
Spraith to Dimmlesea, agitating the grasses and dry wheat, and 
causing the parched leaves to turn like human faces, expectant 
of the storm’s coming. Instead, George Hardrip’s lass emerged 
from the grass lane, flashing the eagerness of her sunlit smile 
across the field, and something unacknowledged and despond¬ 
ent dropped at sight of her within the depths of Guy Open- 
shaw’s bosom, as if it had been a dead hope or a stone. The 
Beachington bells, rising and falling dolefully across the lan¬ 
guid countryside, seemed as though they were hands that wrung 
themselves imploringly. His mother’s hands they might have 
been. In the reproachful sound of them he almost heard his 


139 


The Tree of the Garden 

mother’s voice, incredulous and sorrowful: “Guy! Guy! Oh, 
Guy!” If only the clouds would come together and obliterate 
this threatening patch of evening sky with the round sun in it! 
If only the rain would sweep down upon these whispering 
grass blades and tense expectant leaves, and save him! 

They chose the cliff way for their walk, turning their faces 
northward to where stray beams of sunlight made fiery stars 
and comets of the window panes of distant Dimmlesea. The 
lantern of the lighthouse flung forth a beam of splendour as if 
the lamp behind its myriad lenses was already kindled. On the 
sandy carpet at their feet they saw their own two giant sil¬ 
houettes projected, waving responsive arms to theirs. The sea, 
that had alternately been indigo and black since noon, was 
overcast near shore w T ith opalescent greys, like a giant sheet of 
shot silk, so still that scarce a wave disturbed its surface; but 
the listless lips of water sucked at the wet shingle with a sound 
of kisses drawn through sighs. Steamers, marked in motion by 
the horizontal banners of smoke that trailed from their fun¬ 
nels, made an endless edging to the skyline from Spraith to 
Farnborough, whose white chalk cliffs gleamed into spiritual 
visibility each time the liberated sunlight touched them. 

They walked past the pyramid of stones that marked the 
ruined house of one-time worship, and crossed the Whinsett 
Magna road where it dropped irregularly to the beach in ter¬ 
races of conglomerate and clay, a-riot with coltsfoot and mare’s 
tail. From this point, as they sauntered forward, the signs of 
Sunday began to be disquietingly multiplied. Other couples 
crossed their orbit, wandering with vague and dream-like steps 
along the cliff. Here and there its sheltering ledges disclosed 
their forms recumbent in the long midsummer grass, after the 
rustic fashion of sweethearts, holding hands, or lying with laced 
arms in postures of such ardent immobility as brought all his 
blood to Guy Openshaw’s ears and made them blazing hot. 
He knew not where to look, but widened the distance between 
his beating heart and his companion, striving to preserve a 
casual mien of imperception; calling her notice to the sea and 


140 


The Tree of the Garden 

the ships upon it with an effort to obliterate those more com¬ 
promising features of the landscape crying to be seen. Upon 
George Hardrip’s lass, however, such efforts in defence of deli¬ 
cacy were wasted. These frank displays of mutual liking 
embarrassed her not more than the profitable commerce of her 
poultry. Country couples were but obeying nature, not defiling 
her. They kissed and clipped just as their forebears kissed and 
clipped before them, ensconsed in comfortable cradles of green 
grass, with the scent of crushed clover underneath and the balm 
of wild rose or meadowsweet above; themselves droning in 
amorous monotone like bees, and sipping the illimitable nectar 
from each other’s lips, pressed close to the surgent bosom of 
the very soil that bore them. Guy Openshaw’s companion took 
interested stock of all she saw, even drawing his notice to the 
things of wdiich his delicacy affected ignorance for her sake. 

“Yon’s Elsie Masters wi’ waggoner fro’ Boswick’s. She’s 
ta’en up wi’ him sin’ Arthur Grayson went away.” 

“That was Peterwick miller’s son i’ grass wi’ hind’s lass fro’ 
Plumpton end. They’ve been courting ever sin’ I can remem¬ 
ber. They was courting just same, last time you was at 
Whinsett. You’d see ’em of tens.” 

Guy Openshaw’s response to disconcerting confidences such 
as these was vague. Stung by a sense of implication, some¬ 
thing of that protective hypocrisy resident in all mankind rose 
up within him, and he sought to rear a wondrous monument of 
politeness towards the girl that should commemorate a nature 
free from these frailties of the flesh. He held himself scrupu¬ 
lously apart from her; handed her over stiles and hurdles with 
such circumspection that at length the girl’s voice wavered, and 
her eyes sought his with looks of trouble and enquiry. On a 
sudden the old question crossed her lips—the question of great¬ 
est danger and disquiet to Mrs. Openshaw’s son. Was he 
vexed with her? Would he liever ’a spent night at Suddaby’s? 
Hadn’t he wanted ti come after all ? His stammered protesta¬ 
tions barely reassured her. All the while they had been walk¬ 
ing, she told him, he had looked at her not more than twice. 


The Tree of the Garden 141 

His voice was different. Since their last meeting he seemed 
to have grown terribly polite and tall. She was maybe not 
used to syke grand ways. Why did he keep so far apart from 
her ? All of which considerations Guy Openshaw parried with 
replies more conscientious than inspired, shrinking from this 
exposure of something very like the truth. 

“Don’t you care for me?” the girl suddenly dropped her 
voice to ask him. “I thought you did, a bit, when you was 
sat i’ kitchen wi’ me last night.” 

Such an astounding challenge gave his chivalry no quarter, 
and brought trouble to his lips and eyes. 

“Of course I care for you,” he answered. 

“Do you?” the girl said. “I doubt it’s not a deal. Maybe 
tnere’s someone else you care for more than me. Someone 
you’d liever be walking wi’. Someone different fro’ me. A 
lady, happen.” 

He shook his head. 

“When you’re at wum,” the girl interrogated, “is there 
nobody you gan wi’? Haven’t you a sweetheart? You must 
have.” 

He answered: “I haven’t!” 

“Is I first lass you’ve ta’en a walk wi’?” 

“Yes.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Quite sure.” 

They walked for awhile in silence. 

“If you care for me ... as you say you do,” the girl said 
all at once, drawing closer to his side, “walk wi’ your arm 
round me. Will ye? Aye, do!” 

The girl’s shoulders were pressed against his own; her eyes 
were lifted to his eyes. The proposal flew to his head like 
strong wine, inflaming all his latent curiosities and desires with 
the supplicative vapours of her warm body. The reckless fleshly 
part of him cried out to do the thing put so miraculously in his 
reach by the girl’s own courage, but the shocked and spiritual 
self demurred. 


142 


The Tree of the Garden 

“There are people,” he protested, through lips that were 
become all at once imperfect ministers of speech. “They will 
see us.” 

“What o’ that!” the girl remarked. “They’re doing same 
thing. Everybody diz—that walks oot of a Sunday night. 
They’ll notice us a deal more, walking as we are. They’ll 
mebbe think we’ve quarreled, or I’se brought you oot again 
your will. Put your arm around me. Let folk see you care 
for me a bit.” And then there grew a warmth about his wrist, 
that was the girl’s hand. She drew his arm persuasively about 
her body like an unresisting girdle, clasping his fingers close 
beneath her bosom, and sank into the hollow of his side with a 
little sigh of satisfaction, resting her head upon his shoulder 
as they walked. 

A flash of lightning, succeeded by a sudden clap of most per¬ 
emptory thunder, awoke Guy Openshaw from his dream of 
palpitating unreality in which he wandered. The soporific 
warmth upon his shoulder stirred. “Yon’s thunner,” said 

George Hardrip’s lass. “Flies was right. They’ve bitten 

troublesome all day, and seamawls was screaming ower land 
when I fetched coos. I seed geese flig fro’ yan end o’ grass field 
ti other, and that’s a sign o’ storm. Maybe it’ll blow ower. 

It oftens diz i’ this country. Sea draws it, or it follows river. 

I’se not frightened of a sup o’ rain.” 

But when (the girl still clinging to his hand) they turned 
to look towards the source of thunder, they saw the sun made 
captive in a bastille of black cloud, whose ramparts rose incred¬ 
ibly before them and darkened all the west. It was as if a 
sable canopy were being drawn above the world, subduing every 
shade and tint beneath it to its own tenebrial hue. Every trace 
of green was gone from grass and hedgerow; the speedwell’s 
sky-blue eye peeped from the fissures of parched clay, colourless 
and chill; the alert thorn-leaves caught reflections of strange 
and livid lights upon their restless edges; not yet scorched out 
of its first verdancy by the summer sun, the hushed wheat 
showed an ashen surface like a blanched cheek to the lowering 


143 


The Tree of the Garden 

sky. Beneath the strange unearthly light diffused out of this 
overhanging veil of thunder the browsing sheep and the clover 
they cropped so closely, the dog-roses and the umbels of chervil 
and cow’s parsnip shone with a white and preternatural inten¬ 
sity against the blackness that enveloped them. Deeper and 
deeper fell the threatening gloom, as if not air but ocean water 
flowed above them now, and the world so lately sunlit reposed 
illimitable fathoms deep beneath the source of light. 

“Wisht!” said the girl, imposing silence on Guy Openshaw 
with an uplifted finger. “What’s yon?” 

It was a faint sound coming from afar, like the susurration 
of a barley-field stirred by a suave wind. 

“Yon’s rain!” the girl decided, with promptitude in her 
tones. “It’ll be ower us in a minute! Let’s run. I know 
where w T e can get shelter.” 


3 

Clinging now to Guy Openshaw’s arm with an authority 
urgent and protective, the girl hurried him across the seeds- 
field, stampeding the startled sheep that nibbled on it. On its 
inland side the field was bounded by a low embankment, topped 
by a hawthorn hedge whose boughs, bent horizontal by the 
force of many a northeast gale expended on them in their green 
and supple youth, were fixed for ever in this stormy posture, 
offering a natural roof against the sun and rain, reinforced 
with latticed weavings of bryony and honeysuckle; of bindweed 
and the rank goose-grass. Before they reached this shelter the 
first warm raindrop fell, fat as a great door beetle. A second 
followed, dropping at their feet, and all at once the faint mur¬ 
mur of the distant barley-field became a strident hiss, seething 
suddenly above their heads to a roar of rain that seemed no 
longer compounded of distinguishable drops but continuous 
lashes that whipped and stung them. The storm, urged by an 
electric wind, was rolling coastward from the west on chariot- 
wheels of thunder, and the lightning forked in every quarter 
of the sky. Without a moment’s hesitation George Hardrip’s 


144 


The Tree of the Garden 

lass bolted headlong into the leafy refuge like a rabbit, pulling 
Guy Openshaw after her. The thorny branches hung so close 
to the ground that they had needs lie prone with their heads to 
the hawthorn’s knotted roots on a sward of grass and ground 
ivy grown through a brittle bed of last year’s leaves. 

“I’se often ligged here when I used ti scare crows for Bain- 
ton’s,” the girl imparted. “Mind your eyes again pricks. Creep 
low and hod your face to grund . . . like that.” She put out 
her hand to Guy Openshaw’s head and drew it solicitously 
into shelter. “I could fin’ my way into this spot blindfold.” 
Responsive to her guidance, Guy Openshaw followed his com¬ 
panion into the crypt-like refuge beneath the branches, to find 
their two bodies in such close proximity that with a murmur 
of apology, he strove to give George Hardrip’s lass more place. 
But the stubborn hedgeroots bound him, and the rough goose- 
grass clung tenaciously to his clothes with its myriad dry 
tongues, and George Hardrip’s lass assured him: “There’s 
plenty o’ room beside me. Come closer. Rain’s like to drip 
doon o’ yon side. . . . Hark at it noo! It’s well we run when 
we did.” She settled down with a voice of comfort to the 
enjoyment of their narrow refuge. 

The wind blew, not roaringly, but with a warm and steady 
violence from the southwest, and the big rain beat upon the 
branches of their shelter and rattled the overhanging leaves 
as if they had been castanets. In the adjoining field, where it 
fell upon fallows, the soil hissed and boiled like a stockpot. 
They heard the insatiable parched clots suck up the water with 
the noisy greed of cattle that steep their muzzles into the 
trough at nightfall, and a great odour of rain-slacked dust 
invaded the shelterers’ nostrils after awhile, clogging their 
respiration like a wet cloth. On all sides of them the trickle 
of commingling watercourses rose, fed by countless busy run¬ 
nels born of the violence of the downpour. On the far side 
of their shelter the dike ran with the swollen current of a mill- 
race, importuned by many a score of clogged and gurgling drain- 
pots, and boiling beneath the weight of water from above. All 


145 


The Tree of the Garden 

these things Guy Openshaw and his companion heard, with 
the intensity that darkness lends to human ears; for between 
them and the distended cloud from whose thunder-rent and 
ragged belly the uproarious raindrops fell, intervened tiers of 
leaves and plaited tangle, ranged in protective strata to where 
the topmost branches staggered beneath the full violence of the 
storm. Birds, too, were aflutter in the boughs above, mingling 
their startled protestations with the ruffle of disturbed wings. 
Somewhere in their near vicinity a brood of starlings shrilled in 
supplicative chorus, awakened by the thunder and lightning 
and unwonted surge of rain, and a field mouse—perchance a 
refugee from some flooded and devastated nest—uttered her 
high harmonic note as she coursed in flight among the haw¬ 
thorn roots. Every now and then the lightning flashed above 
them, printing on their dilated eyes the vivid reticulation of 
all these twigs and branches, against a background of lurid 
blue; or the sky trilled with interminable flashes that held 
their shelter in a state of tremulous irradiation, lighting up the 
milky leaves and white stems of the etiolated undergrowth, 
and giving Guy Openshaw and his companion ghastly revela¬ 
tions of each other’s faces: their eyes but smouldering sockets 
in which the reflected lightnings leaped and sank tormentedly, 
like the expiring convulsions of a lamp. 

But through all the reverberations of thunder that shook the 
roof of heaven, the flash and leap of lightning, the cry of birds, 
the clash of leaves and branches, the humid liberation of deep 
dank scents from soil and herbage, Guy Openshaw was con¬ 
scious of the proximity of George Hardrip’s lass. The thunder 
and lightning and noisy rain were but accessories to his sense 
of her; and the storm that raged without seemed to be the 
embodiment of his own insurgent feelings. They lay so close 
together that the girl’s profile, incessantly lit up by the blue 
gleams that played upon it, might have been drawn on his brain 
in lines of fire. Through those points of poignant warmth 
where their limbs made contact the girl’s essence crept into his 
body like an enervating current, filling all the channels of his 


146 The Tree of the Garden 

thought, seductive and possessful. All that he did not know 
of sex, all that he sought to know, all that he shrank from 
knowing, desires that were shames, and shames that were 
desires, rolled up from the depths of his subliminal being and 
broke thunderously on the shore of consciousness. Terrific 
issues swung in the balance within him. What was it that he 
resisted? With whom was this tremendous conflict waged? 
For he seemed, amid the shocks of thunder and the stabs of 
vicious lightning, to be engaged in some titanic combat against 
a host of forces. And each time that the palpitating flickers of 
blue flame played over the face so near to him, deepening its 
eye-sockets and the void that was the girl’s mouth, some voice 
within him cried: “Kiss her . . . kiss her!” 

But he did not kiss her, though the lips of thought were 
for ever fastening upon hers, and the arms of thought con¬ 
tinually enfolding her. Instead, it w T as the girl’s gloved hand— 
moist w T ith the rain that had fallen on it, and warm with the 
blood that flowed beneath—which ultimately groped towards 
his neck, solicitous of his comfort and security. ‘Had rain got¬ 
ten thruff tiv him? Was he ligging on a dry spot? She doubted 
he wasn’t.’ “Lig near me,” she invoked him. “Put your arm 
round me, like you did before. Stop! let’s get my hat off first. 
Pin might stab ye. There! it’s done ...” 

It was done, indeed. She had raised herself on elbow and 
leaned above him for the hat’s removal, and the warmth of the 
girl’s bosom on his shoulder melted the last ingredients of Guy 
Openshaw’s resistance. His two arms sought the girl’s body 
and encompassed it. Next moment all the blinding darkness 
of her hair eclipsed his eyes, and her lips, responding passion¬ 
ately to his, attached themselves in one intense and vital kiss. 
What he had so often longed and feared to do was done. 


4 

The effect was terrific. A flash of lightning and a deafening 
peal of thunder accompanied the kiss, as if emitted from it, 


147 


The Tree of the Garden 

and George Hardrip’s lass sank without a word into the com¬ 
pass of the arms that clasped her. Those generous lips, so often 
looked upon with trouble and desire, lay immobile on Guy 
Openshaw’s strained mouth; parted still, as in a smile of rapt 
content. Her arms enclosed his neck in turn. She neither 
stirred nor spoke, but lay inanimate, unbreathing. For a while, 
versed in no mysteries of sex and knowing nothing of the 
liturgy of passion, Guy Openshaw almost feared the girl slain 
by the intense lightning of his kiss. That rim of teeth, pressing 
with unconscious weight on the boy’s mouth, bit his lips like 
remorse. He strove to liberate his face from hers, but the 
girl’s lips clung to his. Their intensity dismayed him. Never 
had he believed kisses capable of such vehemence or duration. 
All his life he had conceived them as mere osculatory tokens, 
that went off—at their best—with a slight report, and were 
very brief. But not till the act attained a degree scarce short of 
physical suffering did George Hardrip’s lass let his drawn 
mouth go, and slid her cheek of a sudden with strange sub¬ 
missiveness beside his own. Her mouth nestled close against 
his ear—that after a while her breathing fused red hot, as if a 
blowpipe played upon the burning lobe. One arm and the 
girl’s breast lay on Guy Openshaw’s bosom, agitated within by 
some marvellous emotions. 

The kiss, so irresistibly craved and taken, acted in its recoil 
on the boy’s nature like the stupendous firing of Dibner’s gun; 
and something (he knew not w T hat) seemed slain by it. His 
youthful ardours were as if shattered by the force of the explo¬ 
sion. Why had he done this thing? What devil in the blood 
had tempted his desires to toy with such a weapon of destruc¬ 
tion? Now he knew the doleful meaning of the bells from 
Beachington, apostrophising him like the accents of his mother’s 
voice. Now he knew the meaning of his own fears. Where¬ 
fore had he not hearkened to them ? As by an effort of revulsed 
conscience he struggled to disengage his bosom from the guilty 
burden laid upon it, but the girl’s arms tightened instantly 
around his neck. 


148 The Tree of the Garden 

“Dean’t gan,” he heard her beseech him in a dim and dream¬ 
like voice. “Lig beside me. Say you’re not vexed wi’ me. 
Say ye care for me. Do ye? Say you’d sooner be laid oot here 
wi’ me than wi’ anybody else, for all it rains.” 

Through the cataracts of thunder that fell above them, and 
the tremulous intensity of the lightning, their voices merged 
into an altered undertone of intimacy as their bodies did. Lip 
to lip they lay, making interchange of words and kisses; sunk 
into a proximity so profound that their very breathing seemed 
shared, and their two hearts beat like one in mingled ardour 
and content. “When did ye begin to care for me?” Guy 
Openshaw heard the lips against his own enquire. “Was it 
first night I cam’ ti tent? ... If you cared for me, why didn’t 
ye kiss me sooner?” 

Guy Openshaw’s lips responded vaguely: “I don’t know.” 

“Didn’t you ever want to?” 

. . Yes!” 

“When?” 

“Many times.” 

“Which times was them ? Was yan o’ them last night, when 
we stood i’ stable and hung horse-collar on peg together? Do 
you remember?” 

Yes! even now, with the girl’s arms about him and her mouth 
beside his own, he could recall those poignant feelings of the 
night before, when, in the ammoniated suffocation of George 
Hardrip’s stable, they hung up the mare’s steaming harness 
between them—a task curiously prolonged by the darkness and 
the over-zeal with which they sought to lend and to receive 
assistance—and whichever way he turned his head he seemed 
unable to avoid the smooth insistence of the girl’s cheek and 
the midnight softness of her warm hair. 

“And ootside . . . again gate, when ye said good night and 
I took hod o’ your hand?” George Hardrip’s lass demanded in 
her equable voice of dreams. “Did ye want to kiss me then?’* 
“Yes!” 


The Tree of the Garden H9 

“I thought ye did. I stood waiting ... I was wishing you 
would, all while. Why didn’t ye?” 

“I don’t know ... I was afraid. ...” 

“What of?” 

“Of what you’d think. I was afraid you might be offended 
with me.” 

“I’ what way?” 

“For taking advantage ... of your friendship.” 

“Kissing isn’t taking advantage. It’s what lasses was meant 
for. There’s not many on ’em but would bide being kissed by 
you. Caring’s nought wi’oot kissing. I’se been very nigh to 
gi’eing ye a kiss mysen, when we was i’ cooshade together—but 
I dursn’t. Mebbe you’d never ’a spoke ti me again if I had ’a 
done. Should ye?” 

“Of course I should.” 

“Even if I’d gi’en ye a kiss, or begged yan off o’ ye, first 
night i’ tent? I wanted yan. I’d been wanting it for five 
years. I wanted it same day I gi’ed ye cake i’ grass lane. I’d 
made up my mind ti ask ye . . . but at end I dursn’t. And 
you never offered. Why, it wasn’t like ye would. I knew all 
while ye wouldn’t. . . . Do ye remember me waving my hand 
ti ye at end o’ lane? Ye threw cake away, didn’t ye? I know 
ye did. Dog brought it back soon after. I was frightened he 
mud guess who’d made it. I flung it inti pig-tub. You don’t 
know how I felt. ...” 

All at once the lips of George Hardrip’s lass began to trickle 
with reminiscence like one of the rain-fed runnels close beside 
them, making a soporific murmur in the boy’s ear. Past and 
present seemed (for her) as one and indivisible in all things 
where Guy Openshaw was concerned. Not a single one of his 
doings but the tenacious substance of her memory preserved in 
all its completeness, like fossils in the cliff clay. How, for 
instance, she had seen him walk along the beach one night with 
Dibner and the lad from Garside’s, or how, perched on the 
top-rail of Massey’s gate, she had watched him pluck wild 


150 The Tree of the Garden 

roses along the Plumpton lane—acts of such inconsequence for 
him as to have merged long since into the hazes of oblivion. 

Lulled by the level voice that issued from the mouth so 
close to his, Guy Openshaw listened to these revelations of her 
inner self, followed this flashing of the girl’s introspective 
candour into the remote byways of her being, drawn unresisting 
into the bosomed thickets of her confidence as her arms had 
drawn him here—a partaker of her joys and sorrows. She 
showed herself to him without reserve, without adornment; 
often displaying her thoughts undraped, like her neck and 
bosom in the morntide intimacy of the cowshed. What she 
was, she told him, he had made her. Everything she owed to 
him. Cleanliness spelled nothing to her till he came. Had he 
forgotten telling her that her face was dirty? She hadn’t. She 
never could. It was the first thing that showed her he noticed. 
It gave her hope. She began to wash from that day. Now 
cleanliness was a necessity for her as it was for him. “Oftens 
of a night I gets a bath i’ kitchen,” she confided to Guy Open¬ 
shaw, “after he’s gone ti bed. I got yan last night, when you’d 
left me. I’se forced ti wear rough boots and aud clothes for 
farm work, but everything next my skin is clean. I could bide 
anybody should see it. I’se always said to mysen: ‘Would 
ye care for him to see what you’ve gotten on!’—and if I 
shouldn’t ’a done, I changed it. Are ye vexed wi’ me for tell¬ 
ing ye all this? Say if you are! There’s nobody else I’d talk 
to i’ same way. There’s nobody else I’d lig wi’ like this, and 
kiss and let mysen be kissed by—but you. An’ it’s not that 
they don’t ask me to. They do. Dibner’s alius asking me. 
He wanted me ti gan wi’ him to-night.” 

“Dibner?” 

The familiar name spread disquiet through Guy Openshaw’s 
conscience as if, in some sort, he had betrayed a friend. He 
recalled the conversation round the Suddaby tea-table on the 
first day of his return to Whinsett, and the whispered remark 
that Dibner was the best person to interrogate upon the sub¬ 
ject of George Hardrip’s lass, succeeded by the minatory: “Noo 


The Tree of the Garden 151 

then!” from Dibner’s well-filled mouth. Something in his bet¬ 
ter nature experienced a deep remorse to know himself the 
unwitting instrument of supplantation in regard to one whom 
so many memories of youthful comradeship made dear. 

“Didn’t you know?” George Hardrip’s lass enquired. 

He answered in a troubled voice: “Never, till now.” 

“I felt sure ye didn’t,” she said. “I’se oftens wondered, but 
I dursn’t ask ye or say ought aboot it. I was frightened you’d 
mebbe fin’ out that Dibner wanted ti go wi’ me, and would 
’a stopped away for sake of him. Should you ’a done? You 
would, wouldn’t ye? Nay, ye needn’t answer, I know very 
well you would. . . . Not that it would ’a made any difference 
ti Dibner if you had ’a done,” the lass asserted. “I shouldn’t ’a 
gone wi’ him, all same. We’re friends, and speaks ti yan 
another, and he’s waited o’ me an’ walked wum wi’ me fro’ 
Plumpton an’ Beachington a time or two. He’s gi’en me 
flowers an’ all, an’ tried ti kiss me. But it wasn’t Dibner 
picked up basket that evening on Plumpton hill and lent me 
his hankercher ti wipe blood off o’ my face wi’. Dibner used 
ti call names after me i’ them days, like all rest, and put his 
fingers tiv his nose-end. There’s only one person i’ the world 
I’se ever cared for. That’s you\ Not a day’s passed sin’ you 
went away but what Ese thought about ye. Every time I’se 
been wi’ Dibner I’se asked him if they’d heard aught fro’ ye, 
and when you was coming back ti Whinsett. Dibner would 
say: ‘Lawks! thoo hasn’t forgotten him yet!’ and I’d say: 
‘Not likely—nor ever will.’ 

. . It seems like a dream,” she told Guy Openshaw. “I 
dursn’t let go of ye for fear I should wake an’ fin’ mysen i’ bed 
at wum, or asleep i’ chair again fire. Everything’s come oot 
as I tried ti mek believe it would do, for all I never thought it 
would. I misdoot it’s ower good ti last. Happiness dizn’t. 
Next thing . . . you’ll be gone away fro’ Whinsett, and I 
shall be left thinking aboot ye, and wondering if it’s been true 
after all, or whether I’se nobbut fancied it. ... I don’t know 
how fond you are o’ me. I dursn’t ask ye. But I couldn’t mek 


152 


The Tree of the Garden 

you understand how fond I is o’ you. It’s more nor I can 
understand mysen, at times. There’s naught I wouldn’t do for 
ye. There’s naught ye cared ti ask me . . . that I should say 
‘no’ to. Try me! Gi’e me a chance ti show how fond I is of 
ye. Aye, do!” 


5 

At length the rain, beating through the living trellis above 
them and sliding down from branch to branch, began to assail 
their inmost shelter. Each thorn impaled a quivering globe of 
water, that gave back the lightning’s flashes with the vehemence 
of its own fires. Chill drops splashed largely on the shelterers’ 
cheeks and hair, drummed ominously on their discarded hats 
or coalesced into a trickle, sustained and sinister. From time 
to time the bush shook its laden branches like a wet spaniel, 
causing a furious rainstorm of its own. Tiny pools of water, 
collecting in hidden places here and there, uncoiled themselves 
from their hollow beds beneath the hawthorn boughs and glided 
with a glittering and snake-like course through the encum¬ 
brance of last year’s leaves, pausing irresolute before this 
obstacle or that until the flattened serpent-head made choice of 
circumvention and shot forward once again in its sinuous 
passage to the bank edge. In half a dozen places Guy Open- 
shaw felt himself accosted by the wet, and the once dry 
undergrowth—that had crackled on their entrance, like oven 
kindling—lay damp and sodden under his elbow now. He said 
at last, in a dubious voice: “Hadn’t we better be going?” 

The girl drew a long intake of breath through her open lips, 
that turned to a shudder—from which she freed herself with 
a little shake of curious laughter; a jet of laughter, under her 
breath, half joyful, half melancholy, like the gurgle that comes 
up from a stone dropped upon still water. “I think I’se been 
asleep,” she said. “I must ’a been. Was vou frightened I 
didn’t mean ti wake up? Or tired o’ hodding me? Was 
I ower heavy for ye?” 


The Tree of the Garden 153 

All these suggestions, albeit lying so close to truth, he fer¬ 
vently denied—protesting only the rain as the cause of his 
disquiet. 

“I’se not frightened o’ rain!” the girl declared. “I’se tented 
coos many a time wi’ naught but a kaff-sack ower my head, 
and skirt sopping wet. I’d bide more than this—nobbut I could 
have you wi’ me.” 

Nevertheless, at the same instant that her breast dilated to 
the proud utterance of this triumphant faith, confidence for¬ 
sook her. She fell a prey to the old dog-like humility. Had 
she kept him longer than he desired? Was he angry with her? 
Was he sure he wasn’t? 

. . . Aye! (she declared) wet had come in upon them and 
no mistake. Did he blame her for bringing him to syke a spot? 
It was all her fault, she knew. Maybe he’d sooner ’a gone 
straight back ti tent. My word! Feel of her hair. Feel of 
her skirt. And stockings. Feel o’ them an’ all—wet up ti 
knees. 

At that overwhelming contact with realities so firmamental 
high above experience, it seemed to Guy Openshaw as if his 
soul held breath, prostrate before an altar, in expectation of 
some tremendous epiphany. Think! This sex he had been 
taught from boyhood to worship from afar; whose ostensory 
of flesh and wonder had been elevated with such portentous 
reverence by his mother’s hands for the eyes of chivalry to rest 
on; that had inhabited heretofore the extreme and outward 
region of his mind—could it be incarnate close beside him at 
last? Was the deity already half divulged to the vision of the 
devotee? Did some divine essence seek communion with his 
own —invoke the cooperation of his active faith for a supreme 
disclosure of itself? How little he understood of himself or 
others. For all her nearness to him, George Hardrip’s lass 
might have been a planet, wrapped in the mystic envelope of 
her sex—at once transparent and opaque, luminous and blind¬ 
ing ; swimming in that remote fine ether too rare for his 
asphyxiated lungs to breathe. 


i54 


The Tree of the Garden 


6 

They scrambled from their thorny shelter, sensible of the 
burden of their wet garments once they sought motion in 
them. 

To Guy Openshaw this transition from immobility to move¬ 
ment, from the narrow imprisonment of their refuge to the 
wideness of the world, came as a deliverance. Out here he was 
free. Free to exercise his sinews, to taste the joyful sanity of 
motion. Those burning problems imposed upon his brain by 
the relentless apposition of limbs were flung aside like difficult 
and hateful tasks. Something of the exultation of the refugee 
sustained him, as if he had escaped grave dangers and now took 
new hold on life with the fervour born of gratitude. 

The rain still fell upon them in their progress, though 
sparsely, and void of all vehemence. Such drops as had of late 
assailed their shelter must have been scourged from overladen 
branches by the last sallies of an expiring wind, and the trickles 
of voluble rivulets and half-spent runnels had magnified the 
violence of the storm to ears grown hypersensitive by long 
listening. Overhead, the solid ledge of cloud that once op¬ 
pressed them had slid eastward, leaving visible a translucent 
lake of evening sky in which the pale stars flowered like water- 
lilies. Great rocks of cloud still blackened all horizons, but 
the force of the storm was spent, and a calm and deepened 
breath filled night’s bosom. Out upon the sea the thunder 
muttered menacefully in its shaggy beard, like one who tries 
by threats to justify a broken anger. Already the venom was 
gone out of the lightning’s forked and hissing tongue. Only 
intermittent shallow flashes licked the wet landscape, illumi¬ 
nating the crenellated outlines of the hedgerows and making 
the pools and sloppy cartruts leap with phosphorescent gleams. 
Purged of every particle of parching dust and grassy pollen, 
the rain-cleansed air served as a lens to light, purifying each 
beam that passed through it, and lending lustre to the humblest 
ray that peeped from distant farm or cottage window. Space, 


i 55 


The Tree of the Garden 

in this unchoked atmosphere, seemed annihilated. All lights 
shone as one, incredibly magnified, and brought so dazzlingly 
near that the eye—long unaccustomed to any medium but the 
dark—flinched at their too violent assault. Spraith unsheathed 
its naked sword from a scabbard of fierce fire, and plunged the 
blinding blade up to the hilt in unresisting ether, slicing great 
arcs of sky. The lighthouse, perched on its distant promon¬ 
tory, might have stood no farther than a field away. Above 
the nearmost hedges Dimmlesea’s lethargic eyelid rose and fell 
with vast dispassion, imprisoning and setting free its insup¬ 
portable white gaze. Far to the north, Farnborough’s red 
beam came to a minute clear focus, squeezed slowly out of the 
flesh of night like a single drop of blood, alternating with two 
pure white pearls. A stable lantern, swung with the indolence 
of an incensorium across some Homerise foldyard, blazed for 
a while in splendour like a star of Bethlehem, flinging out pro¬ 
digious rays. Barely the last of these—lengthening and short¬ 
ening like agitat- d antennae—followed the lantern to extinc¬ 
tion, when a meteoric flame burst out on a sudden against the 
darkened background of Plumpton hill. Rhythmically it rose 
and fell three times, flinging out such arms of radiance as almost 
reached the sky. One would have said a rick-fire or new-lit 
beacon lifting its flames to heaven, much rather than the 
match in sober truth it was, ignited by some casual Plumpton 
smoker (that might have been, perchance, the blacksmith’s 
own and Sunday self, come out to take stock of the roadway 
after rain) and sucked at nonchalantly in the cupped hollow 
of his hoofy hands. Intensely magnified by the clear medium 
in which it burned, the flame flashed on Guy Openshaw’s 
sight with an illusion of such proximity that he halted in his 
step, perplexed by this and the multitude of other lights 
confounding his horizon, but George Hardrip’s lass had no 
misgiving as to the location of the light, or the cause of it. 

“Yon’s at Plumpton,” she decided; “betwixt Smith’s corner 
and cliff lane. Somebody’s lighting their pipe. Look-ye, yon’s 
gleam on their hands an’ face. Noo they’ve thrown match 



156 The Tree of the Garden 

away. Lights alius looks a lot closer after rain.” Her sight, 
untroubled by the darkness of the path they traversed or the 
insistence of these bright misleading lights, and her instinct 
of locality, seemed unerring. Guy Openshaw stumbled by her 
side, implicitly dependent on her guidance, like a blind man. 
For the slaked earth and drenched herbage and sopping grass 
emitted now no light at all save the evanescent gleams re¬ 
flected from their wetness. The faint field tracks, dry-trodden 
through grass and clover, that disclose something of the parched 
whiteness even on the darkest night to eyes dependent on 
them, were rain-deepened to one invariable hue. Only the 
most proficient and experienced foot could detect by feel the 
difference in the quality of what it trod on and by its fine 
touch maintain sure contact with paths no longer distinguish¬ 
able by the eye. No scent save a great flat monoscent of 
wetness rose from the drenched world. Those thousand odours 
that had preceded the storm, as if announcing its near advent 
and crying to the sky for rain, were quenched every one; 
beaten down into the deep dust by what they cried for; chilled 
beneath a veil of water. The very air that soughed over the 
countryside was chill and humid, smelling of nothing but 
fresh rain. It moved deeply—an ocean rather than a wind. 

In such an altered universe Guy Openshaw and his com¬ 
panion walked, going inland at her dictation to reach the 
straggling Whinsett lane. To Guy Openshaw it seemed he 
traversed by the girl’s side a territory thronged with pitfalls. 
Eye and foot alike deceived him, and his credulous senses 
recounted many marvels. Now he negotiated mountains; anon, 
led by the girl’s hand, he crossed treacherous ravines, poised on 
precarious planks, with the unnerving swirl of deadly waters 
below. At another moment they struck sideways through a 
jungle of confused corn, pushing aside the wet wheatstalks and 
drenched ears that overhung the narrow footway; or he skirted, 
at her instigation, the bristling ramparts of a hedge, or 
clambered over hedge-hurdles made formidable with furze. 
To his guide every inch of the ground they traversed was 


157 


The Tree of the Garden 

familiar; every field had a name and a locality. Path should 
be hereabouts; dyke should be yonder; gate at far end was 
fastened wi’ an aud head-rope; there’d be a puddle aside of it; 
a gurt stone set again post to prop it. They could turn this 
road, or they could gan that; each close offered a dozen alter¬ 
natives to her expert knowledge. But her choice was swift and 
sure, and at last she led Guy Openshaw to the narrow, grassy 
lane. “Did he know where he was, noo?” 


7 

At first he did not. His eyes, recalled abruptly from their 
concentration on a visionary plane, saw only the blotted con¬ 
tours of the hedge, beyond the girl’s extended arm. 

“It’s spot where I said good-bye ti ye that afternoon,” the 
girl informed him. “When I gi’ed ye cake you threw i’ 
hedge-bottom. Don’t ye remember?” 

Yes! Now he remembered, albeit this present self of his 
seemed to have no conceivable relationship with the earlier 
self that acted so. Both of them, by the strange coincidence 
of destiny, had been perplexed and troubled selves, stumbling 
beneath a burden weightier than their will. Yes! Somewhere 
in this very hedge he had flung away the incriminating gift 
by an act ungenerous and vile—for all it served rectitude. 
Now he stood upon the self-same spot, the recipient of an in¬ 
finitely greater gift from the same hands . . . How, on this 
occasion, was rectitude to act? For this gift—his conscience 
cried within him—could not be so lightly flung away. 

“I wanted a kiss fro’ ye an’ all,” he heard the girl’s voice 
recite in a dreamy cadence. “Only I dursn’t ask ye. Gi it me 
noo, will ye? Aye, do.” 

Her lips were upheld in the gloom; tenebrous lips, divined 
to a shape of supplication, and Guy Openshaw’s sympathies 
stooped to them. What else, what less, could chivalry, tender¬ 
ness, sentiment, yearning, love, shame, courage, cowardice, 
vibrant faithfulness and trembling infidelity do but this? He 


158 The Tree of the Garden 

stooped to them; a prodigious stoop; a stoop that brought 
his head from where it touched the topmost stars of heaven, 
down, without deviation, to the girl’s uplifted lips. 

And deeper still. Between, and beyond them. Through 
their portal he sank into unfathomable depths, weighted by 
the girl’s arms. Down, and still down, and ever down, in one 
slow, vast descent, as if this kiss were plummet of infinity. 

... A face! A sad face. A white warped face, gleaming 
distortedly at him in the convolutions of descent, like a silver 
disc that sinks from sight in motionless deep water. His 
mother’s face, drowning beside him in the voiceless depths 
of grief and shame. 

It checked and roused him. He forced aside these clinging 
arms of w^ater; freed himself desperately from immersion. 

The sombre Whinsett hedge rose up before him like a rock 
of refuge. He grasped the actuality of it with a drowning 
energy. Let him look at it. Let him fill his brain with the 
sobering images of real things. Quick, too ... let him walk 
again. In motion lay safety. Inactivity was alive with dan¬ 
gers. The moment their joined footsteps ceased, all earth 
dissolved beneath them—grew fluid. Look! yonder was a star 
to clutch at; there a cloud; a tree; a light; a shadow. Let 
him cling to them with all his senses; steep himself in the 
external, far from those deadly caverns of his inner self; 
live keenly on the outer edge of consciousness, close to every 
freshening sight and scent and sound. Throw high the head; 
hold up determined lips above temptation; incline an edge of 
half-averted cheek to catch and keep the freshness of the cool 
night air. Count each forward step as if it were a coin of 
precious gold. Already the lane began to broaden; its soddened 
grass and deep and rain-filled ruts merged in the growing 
semblance of a road, littered with loose stones distributed by 
the storm. The vision of George Hardrip’s cottage, slowly 
demarking its substance from the gloom, brings succour to his 
soul. A voice of exultation in his bosom cries: “At last! 
at last!” They were by the wooden wicket now, all rimmed 


The Tree of the Garden 159 

and crowded with pendent drops that fell in a sudden shiver 
as the girl leaned against it. The melancholy gurgle of choked 
gutters blended with the apathetic drip from a repleted water- 
butt, but no other sound or sight of life came from George 
Hardrip’s home. 

“I’d offer to set you back as far as tent,” she said to him, 
“but I know it wouldn’t be any use. You wouldn’t let me.” 

He interposed a hasty “No, no. You mustn’t think of it 
to-night. I shall slip across the fields in no time.” 

“I knew that’s what you’d say. I won’t try an’ keep ye 
any longer. Thank ye for coming wi’ me ti-night. I shan’t 
forget it.” 

There was a pause—a troubled, anxious pause. Guy Open- 
shaw broke it with a voice of fabricated cheerfulness, affecting 
to ignore the fact that silence, for them both, was become 
but a vast repository of unsolved problems, saying: “Well, 
good night!” 

“Good night.” George Hardrip’s lass submissively replied. 
And silence descended on the twain afresh, and neither of them 
stirred. For there was one thing lacking yet to complete his 
liberation. He knew well enough what it was; the lass knew, 
too—and waited. 

It loomed above him—a threatening wall of rock, dis- 
lodgable by the lightest touch of lips; as if to breathe or stir 
might prompt precipitation of its mass. And then, above the 
sound of drip and splash and the noisy riot of his own think¬ 
ing, he heard a sound that caused his heart all suddenly to 
leap with hopefulness. It was the sound of footsteps coming 
up the road towards them. Human footsteps; honest foot¬ 
steps, untrammelled by perplexities or passions; plodding 
equably and diligently like the ticking of some conscientious 
clock as their studded soles and metal heel-plates rang clear 
upon the rain-swilled surface of the road. Klop, klop, klop, 
klop. At first but a faint rhythm, marking the outer maze 
of consciousness, they grew at length into the centre of it; 
insistent footsteps calling for attention. Long before the 


160 The Tree of the Garden 

owner’s shape emerged from the envelope of gloom in which 
these footsteps resounded, his apparition seemed imminent— 
as if the next step must disclose it. 

“I know who yon is,” George Hardrip’s lass pronounced. 
“I can tell by sound on him. It’s Dibner. See-ye! yonder 
he comes.” 

The yonder indicated by the girl’s voice and finger lay far 
outside the range of her companion’s sight, which must needs 
probe darkness for some moments more before the footsteps 
began to alternate fantastically between sound and substance, 
as though the darkness writhed about a shape. Dibner in 
truth it was. He emerged out of the gloom so long concealing 
him with something inexorable about his motion, akin to the 
slow birth of a world or the evolution of an idea. With his 
coat-collar turned up to meet the depressed brim of his hard 
felt hat, and his hands withdrawn into the sockets of his 
swinging Sunday sleeves, he trod his measured way along 
the road; cleaving space with a fixed profile that paid regard 
neither to right nor left. Not a man, but a progression. 
Movement automatic and unfaltering—aye, and reproachful: 
with the reproachfulness that makes no accusation. 

. . . Now he drew near to them. His feet, at such close 
quarters, seemed to tread no longer on the road, but on Guy 
Openshaw’s hearing. Now he was abreast of George Hard¬ 
rip’s cottage and the gateway by which the silent figures stood, 
marching loudly through Guy Openshaw’s brain. Now he 
moved out of it once more. He was on the point of passing, 
absorbed completely as it seemed in the deep problem of motion. 
Reproached by those footsteps, Guy Openshaw felt conscious 
of a sudden shrinkage into silence; of a desire to draw the 
folds of night more closely, thickly about him—although he 
knew that the deception was paltry, and availed nothing. For 
he understood this countryside too well by now to be imposed 
on by Dibner Suddaby’s inexorable motion, and to believe that 
—even on the darkest night—he could ever overlook the pres¬ 
ence of bis kind. Each of this silent trinity was intently, vio- 


The Tree of the Garden 161 

lently conscious of the other. Their probing senses met and 
touched and questioned in the dark like signal-beams of light; 
all stillness was instinct with their activities. . . . But Dibner 
must not be suffered to depart like this, without a word. 
Such silence seemed to put the seal on shame. Speak! Give 
greeting before it was too late. 

“Good night, Dibner!” 

Without deviation of head or check of foot, the plodding 
Dibner returned an unperturbed “Good neet . . .” It fell 
over his shoulder like the end of a scarf, with a brief and 
mournful cadence; the salutation of a being possessed of no 
concern save solitude and no pursuit but motion. Klop, klop, 
klop, klop. The steps went on, unfaltering, unbroken. 

That was Dibner. That was Dibner Suddaby whom Guy 
Openshaw had once been friends with; had placed on a 
pedestal of admiration and worshipped. Now nothing but foot¬ 
steps on a lonely road, and the briefest voice of greeting. 

He listened to the retreating footsteps with an almost 
shamefulness, as if he had wrought their plodding originator 
some grievous wrong. And he possessed, too, that curious 
envy of the one injured, which is the very soul of guilt. He 
envied Dibner. He envied him his freedom of these footsteps, 
the tranquillity of this motion unhampered by remorse or the 
interrogations of uneasy conscience. Klop, klop, klop, klop. 
What a thing it was to be free—to be one’s self, without 
regrets or obligations. Now the pedestrian was nearing the 
bend of the road; soon he would be dipping out of earshot 
behind the first hollow. And here stood Guy Openshaw, 
coveting the liberty of Dibner’s feet; the liberty to move, 
free of all impediment of lips or arms. 

“. . . Good night!” 

Desperation pronounced the words at length. For Dibner’s 
footsteps were fading fast, and silence began to settle deeply 
once again. What chance had he in the grip of silence— 
his most inveterate, relentless foe? Klop . . . klop . . . Fast 
was he being forsaken. Only intermittent footfalls reached 


162 The Tree of the Garden 

him now; one in every three or five, that seemed to seek 
him without hope, as those do who cry despondently upon the 
lost. 

“Good night . . returned George Hardrip’s lass. 

And in the smitten pause that followed he touched her 
briefly with his lips and fled. 


8 

Already, in these recent days, George Hardrip’s lass had 
cost Guy Openshaw some troubled bouts of slumber; but 
to-night he slept not at all. Dampness possessed the tent, 
whose sagging canvas offered sepulture to grave-like odours of 
sodden grass and mud. Moths, driven into shelter by the 
rain, agonised with bruised wet wings upon the floor or 
drummed distractedly to find an outlet and flit a-mating once 
again. Two immense black snails, lengthening and shortening 
their uncertain horns, drew slow and slimy bodies up the 
tent-side when Guy Openshaw returned. Through the sprung 
joints of the wet floorboards a huge earthworm had pushed its 
blind head, lying in repulsive immobility upon the blackened 
wood like a red vein. It gleamed for a while beneath the 
light of his lamp, flashing back into obscurity with elastic 
animation at the stamp of his foot. Nature, even for her 
lovers, can become too intimate at times. 

Mechanically he doffed his soiled and sodden shoes, divested 
himself of the damp garments that clung with sullen obstinacy 
to his skin as if they had been reproaches, and crept into the 
comfortless shelter of his bed. From time to time the high 
buttery bush overhanging the tent discharged a shower of 
drops upon the roof; they smote the resounding canvas in a 
brief but furious volley, as if they had been bullets. Far away 
to seaward the great belly of the storm rumbled on a low 
horizon like the ruttling cows in George Hardrip’s shed; its 
thunders now scarce loud enough to overpower the droning of 


The Tree of the Garden 163 

the sea. At rare intervals the tent flickered in faint lightning, 
like a moth that palpitates wings at twilight. 

Lying on his narrow mattress, with arms beneath his head, 
Guy Openshaw was conscious of these things, though they 
reached him but dimly through the vivid intensity of his 
thoughts as if they had been objects of the dusk descried 
through a firelit window. He had fled to this place of shelter 
like a renegade, albeit (in truth) he was a refugee for con¬ 
science sake. And now’ he lay consuming in the fire of re¬ 
morse, wrapped so to blindness in the smoke of it that he 
perceived not clearly the nature of the sins for which he 
burned—save that they were sins of exceeding magnitude. 
Chief of them all, perhaps, w r as this: the sin of disobedience 
to his mother. He had broken the commandment of her love. 
His wanton feet had strayed beneath that baleful tree for¬ 
bidden in the garden. He had not plucked, not eaten; but 
his sinful fingers touched the fruit, and lo! on a sudden the 
fruit lay in his hand. That there clung a sort of bitter 
triumph to the act, vaunting some perverted value in himself, 
lent him no comfort. Rather, it deepened his dismay. For 
he had not sinned for sinning’s sake. His feet had ever loved 
the law, and his heart had hearkened to his mother’s word. 

For Guy Openshaw, as for his mother, Love had but one 
nature—one quality, owning no part with earth corruptible. 
And now, as he looked into his heart to learn what quality 
of feeling linked him to George Hardrip’s lass, behold, every¬ 
where he perceived its roots embedded in the flesh. Always 
this flesh formed the burden of his thinking. It burst forth 
into blossom like the maythorn, garlanding the hedgerows 
and sending the whole countryside a-riot with its ecstatic sweet¬ 
ness and beauty; subduing all things to itself. The dead 
weight of its very fragrance seemed to drag the spirit down; 
bowed it earthward like a branch beneath the scented burden 
of its own blossoms. Love, that by all righteous showings 
should soar skyward, drooped with him rather to the ground; 


164 The Tree of the Garden 

to the very bosom of the soil. Earth bared her breasts, and he 
sank upon them between sleep and rapture. 

How was this son of Mrs. Openshaw to divine the glorious 
truth that Flesh is co-heiress of the kingdom of God? That 
Angels chant in choir of heaven only such hymns made perfect 
as the blood sings here below, in veins of palpitating clay? 
For a revelation so prodigious nothing in his mother’s teaching 
had prepared him. She had shown him no more of the sub¬ 
stance of human passion than the mere flower of it, concealing 
all its carnal attachments with blind devotion to her own 
ideals of a purity so exalted that it allowed nor soil nor roots 
to the lily. She had cultivated a child’s garden of the heart 
for the exercise and training of her son’s feelings, and long 
after his mind and body had outgrown it she kept this garden 
sedulously unchanged for him and her to walk in; a pious 
fiction perpetuating her anxiety to protect the purity of his 
soul at any cost, even by an arrest of all development—as 
though wisdom can go forward and the body stand still. . . . 
Is it to be wondered at that one brought up in such a garden 
within a garden should falter now when his unchecked foot¬ 
steps, following in faith the paths of the affections, led him 
into depths and tangles where scents almost unbreathable 
swung in the suspended air like banners stiffened with thick 
thread of gold, strangely disturbing the senses with their 
rhythms; where, seen through vistas of green glades, the vivid 
sunlight sprawled on velvet sward-like limbs; where silence 
thickened till the clogged heart stood still in it, or birds 
distilled their slow narcotic songs like syrup; like the great 
yellow tears of honey dropping from the muslin strainer into 
the silent pancheon before the sunlit window in the Suddaby 
kitchen ? 


9 

In the chill discomfort of its wet garments and the ex¬ 
haustion of the senses, conscience had wrought upon the errant 
flesh at first like dough; had led it here, docile and remorseful. 


The Tree of the Garden 165 

It had hearkened to the words of conscience. How true were 
the words of conscience; living burning words, they were, 
like coals to warm the bowels of contrition. Let conscience 
be his guide henceforth. Let conscience lead him. 

And as he listened to the voice of conscience, the warmth 
and comfort of the bed imbued his body with a fervour 
apostolic. The glow of penitence spread through his members 
like a fire. Gates opened and let the abject senses free. They 
issued from him, gaining strength and courage as they went, 
and he held up despairing ears to catch the voice of conscience 
—but now he seemed to be not more than one who sits in 
silence beneath the moving jawpiece of a preacher and hears 
no sound at all by reason of the intentness of his own thoughts. 

Hark! . . . What was that? A footfall? 

Aye! A human foot, trembling with eagerness and stealth, 
that trod as if it feared to trample on its own delight, coming 
quickly towards him. His ears could register the crushing 
of the wet grass; the plash of raindrops shaken by swift feet; 
the ruffle of displaced air as her bosom cleaved it. Nay, it 
seemed to him he could already hear the surge of her thinking; 
the hopes and fears and exaltations and alarms that formed 
the atmosphere in which she walked. Now she was by the 
tent, within an arm’s length of his bed, awaiting to invoke 
him if he stirred. 

And he did not stir. He did not breathe. He sought to 
close the very doors of hearing, lest her listening sense might 
enter and surprise this other listening sense within. All his 
fervid resolutions died out like a momentary blaze of straw, 
leaving nothing but ash and cowardice behind. Speak? Not 
he: he dared not. He lay without lips or courage, asking 
what George Hardrip’s lass could want with him at this 
hour; what he should answer if she called upon his name 
through the canvas wall; if she shook it softly with her hand : 
“Hey! . . . Are ye awake?” 

But she did not touch the tent; she used no voice upon 
him. She wandered impotently round and round; her purpose 


166 The Tree of the Garden 

lost in its own circles as if devoid of power for consummation. 
Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff, went her wan feet through the grass, 
with rhythmic shearing sounds as if she cut it with a tired 
sickle. Ruff, ruff, ruff. Not like Dibner’s ringing footfall on 
hard roadway that he had listened to this evening, albeit 
permeated with something of the same forlornness. Now close 
and clear to him; now faint, as though despair retreated— 
so that he raised himself on elbow for their better hearing, 
and recognised these sounds at last for what they were: the 
rough tongue of a cropping cow that tore long grass in some 
remote hedge-bottom. 

Fool that he was—sense-deluded fool! The sounds, identi¬ 
fied, dropped all dissimulation, as if they mocked him. Ruff, 
ruff, ruff, ruff. No longer footfalls, but a cow’s contemptuous 
laughter. He fell back humiliated on his bed. Passion was 
ridiculed; cowardice exposed. Let him return to stern reali¬ 
ties ; face hard facts. Imaginings led nowhere. They only 
filled the mind with nothingness, as when the wind crept 
beneath the brailings of his tent and blew it sententious-big. 

. . . So, upon his narrow bed, he strove and wrestled. On 
the one side his mother, robed in grief and righteousness; 
on the other side, George Hardrip’s lass, with the muteness 
of her eyes and lips to plead for her. And between these 
widely distant poles himself—for ever turning. 


VI 


I 

D AYBREAK, and the jubilation of birds. Sunlight, 
clean-limbed and eager, embracing the green world 
with an athlete’s warmth; too virile-strong for pas¬ 
sion. Immobile white clouds lying here and there upon the 
blue sky like glorified replicas of the cattle that chew the 
leisured cud, flank deep in pastured buttercups below. Un¬ 
flawed pools of sky-blue water enamelling the roadway hollows 
as if they were turquoises set in fillets of pale gold. Hedges, 
cleansed of the dust that choked their leaves, displaying the 
virid eagerness of spring. Rain-dashed petals of the wild-rose 
lying like a white rime on the grass beneath each green rotund¬ 
ity of bush that shed them. The gorse agleam with last night’s 
diamonds, blazing amid the clear topaz of its own bloom. 
Wheat slashed and flattened, as if some hefty giant, treading 
in upon it, had laid about him with a flail. Smoke creeping 
shyly out of chimneys like chaste avowals from lips of modesty, 
abashed by the listening intentness of the sky. Cockerels, filled 
with martial valor, blowing bugles of defiance. Beasts blaring 
from shed and foldyard. Dogs barking. Buckets chiming 
like bells. 

A day of glorious rebirth on which the world wakens out 
of slumber to the eternal freshness of life; on which nature 
shakes free of the servitude of centuries and flees with laughing 
lips and careless heart back to the cloudless liberties of youth. 
There are no problems on a day like this. Soul and body can 
abide concordantly together, scarce knowing whether their ex¬ 
alted state be one of ideality or incarnation. It is a morning 
of such perfect loveliness that the heart is filled with a sense 

167 


168 The Tree of the Garden 

of underlying awe; of secret apprehension. This outward 
beauty seems too delicate, too fragile, for material minds to 
contemplate without risk of injury. An act, an unwise word, 
a rash thought may destroy it. One must not think too deeply 
lest the envelope of loveliness burst on a sudden, like an irides¬ 
cent bubble, pricked by the acuity of thought. Especially does 
this danger threaten those who have resolved hard problems; 
who hold tremulous equations balanced on a beam of the finest 
thinking. For then one single grain of logic dropped by inad¬ 
vertence in the scale, and the perfect equilibrium of the uni¬ 
verse may be broken; life’s visible contentment rent from east 
to west like a fine veil; shattered irretrievably like coloured glass. 

Yet for George Hardrip’s lass, judging by the look she turns 
upon the world from the angle of the cowshed wall, there 
dwells slight beauty in what she sees. She stands passive with 
her pail, out of whose scoured and burnished side blazes a 
second, softer and more silvery, sun. The pail, itself recipro¬ 
cating the sky’s azure, gleams a supple thing of beauty in the 
morning light. The girl’s two hands hold it pendulous against 
her skirt, and as unconsciously she swings it to and fro, the 
argent sun reflected in it rocks like a proud glory-flower ac¬ 
knowledging the breeze. 

But the girl knows nothing of the effulgent beauty of which 
she forms a part. Her eyes travel straight out from her into a 
great emptiness; a great void of sky; a great waste of green and 
sunlight; a world as empty as the pail she holds. For the mere 
finery of a morning wastes its efforts on her. She is of the 
country, born and bred. Fine days and wet days, days of sun 
or rain or cloud—what are they to her but things that serve or 
thwart the farmer’s need? She shares not the town-dwellers’ 
fastidious delight in the blueness of skies or the softness of 
sunlight. Will he come? Aye, that is the quesiton. Days 
come, she knows; an interminable string of them, plodding like 
cows along the lane. Days are nothing of themselves; they 
bring no joy whether their flanks be bright or dull. Let these 
go by. The question is: Who comes with them? Each morn- 


The Tree of the Garden 169 

ing since Guy Openshaw’s return to Whinsett she has gazed 
with eyes the same into the coloured void that somewhere hides 
him; her doubt has been diurnal. Audacious hope has set up 
friendship with a deity; the arms of her affection outstretch to 
the skies; but deities are fickle—well she knows—and what 
power have these unworthy arms to pull down the proud neck 
of a demi-god? Nay! he will not come. Her sense might 
know he will not come. His parting voice, his parting look, 
his parting gesture, his parting kiss—all conspire to persuade 
her that he will not come. This dream she clings to has no 
more worth than a glass jewel set in a brooch of lead. One 
day a scornful fate will tread it underfoot; grind its mockery 
into the dust. One day, sure as death, it must be. Why not 
this? Aye! this day it is. 

And then he comes. The heart within her leaps for exul¬ 
tation. The death-throe of doubt is so poignant that gladness 
well-nigh dies of it too. All the beauty of the morning seems 
centred, for George Hardrip’s lass, in the approaching figure. 
The sun’s self could not move with a more god-like gait to¬ 
wards her; there is more brightness about his brow than in all 
the beams of Apollo. Out of her great gratitude, out of the 
surgent sickness of humility, she feels that she could fall down 
and worship him; offer him her prostrate flesh to tread on. 
To be bruised by such a one were, sure, fierce sacramental food 
for the heart’s hunger, uplifting love and making it strong and 
proud through pain. Sacrifice! Sacrifice! The need of it 
burns in her as she gazes on him. Why will he exact, accept, 
no sacrifice of her? Why is there no cruelty clamouring in 
his godhead to be satisfied? No need of blood to slake the 
hieratic lusts? His nature seems endowed with the serene 
mildness of a morning star; his eyes have the cool dispassion 
of dew; words of meaning or of imploration slide off his 
ear like drops of water from the necks of waterfowl; pearls 
suffered to slip back unheeded to the lake’s bosom. O, that 
his blood held appetites for love to kindle; that the cold 


i7° The Tree of the Garden 

altar-stone of his perfect nature might blaze with sacrificial 
fires demanding to be fed. 

He has been bathing this morning, for look! the towel 
hangs about his neck. He comes straight from the embraces 
of the sea; the kisses of salt water linger still like a chill fine 
membrane upon his flesh; a tissue of delectable coolness through 
which his blood will glow like sunlight. She is jealous of the 
sea, as of a living rival. The sea has held him, loved him, 
nursed him, laughed with and eluded him; been at once as 
wife and mother, sister and shy sweetheart to him. She tells 
herself despondently he loves the sea; he cares more for the 
sea’s caresses than any she can give him. What is she to him, 
measured against the limpid loveliness of water? The sea, 
the sky, the sun, the songs of birds and scents of flowers, and 
greenness of things that grow—all these he loves; all these 
possess him; all these are the true sweethearts of his soul. 
She may snatch his lips, make his mouth her prisoner for a 
moment—but what of that? Such kisses are but feeble drops 
of rain that fall, fertilising nothing; leaving no trace. They 
are lost at once in the largeness of these greater things that 
form the true substance of his affections. 

And now he stands before her. He wears no hat; his salt- 
wet hair clings closely to his temples still. For her, disturbingly. 
She loves to see it so. She loves to see it so, or anywise. His 
height, the freshness of his young skin—not burned, but glo¬ 
riously deepened by the sun—the serene splendour of his smile, 
that seems as if it stooped from heaven to reach her; the pure 
intensity of his grey-blue eyes; the liquid softness of his voice— 
all these crush the soul of her humility, confronting her like 
the superb and gleaming walls of an unattainable city of 
desire. Something infinitely above and bitterly beyond her. 
A whole world of perfections closed to such unworthiness as 
hers. She is naught but a beggar at the gate, beseeching char¬ 
ity: a look, a smile, a word to feed starved longings on. 

In the receptive dimness of the cowshed the feelings pluck¬ 
ing at her all this while could be no longer curbed. She set 
down the pail on the uneven cobbles and over a shoulder 


The Tree of the Garden 171 

offered him her face. She asked him nothing. Only her look 
besought him, and the troubled laughter on her lips that 
seemed as if it spread a kirtle over the nakedness of the 
mouth's desire. Not that herself felt shame of the desire. 
Rather, she gloried in it. But she was less sure of the feelings 
of this other; her own, in his presence, felt a wild thing’s fear. 
Despite their kisses of last night, for all their wondrous in¬ 
timacy fused by lightning-fire and welded by loud thunder, 
she was unsure of him. A desolate flat space, a dreary salt- 
marsh of division, seemed to creep between them after each 
last parting, as if the inconstant earth, or they upon it, shifted. 
Kisses were but like footprints sunk into unstable sand, that 
every jealous tide washed out. 

And yet he read the plea upon her lips, half veiled in 
laughter though it was. Read it surely and swiftly, as if it 
had been an open page of one of those unfathomable printed 
books that piqued her curiosity in his tent. Yes! and roused 
her tacit hatred of it, as for a thing of life, enjoying secrets 
with him unshared by her; secrets perpetually confided over 
the dull wall of her understanding. He took her two hands 
into his, and laid one brief soft look upon her eyes, and kissed 
her. Kissed her twice. So . . . and so. Kisses of a new sort, 
her quickened sense divined; swift, yet not fugitive as last 
night's kiss had been; not made incontinent with desire to 
flee. The odour of sea-water clung, like an enticement, to his 
skin, and her lips—for all his mouth manoeuvred to elude 
them—tasted the briny saltness of it. No wonder cattle loved 
to lick the gleaming lumps of salt-rock in their cribs. And 
while he kissed her, he held her hands. Why did he hold her 
hands? Never had he held them so before. He held them at 
possessful, soft arm’s length, and it was a sweet and precious 
feeling to have them taken so; as if there dwelt a virtue in 
themselves; as if they were blossoms that his passion longed 
to cull. Did it show her flesh, her body, grew daily dearer 
to him? What hands these were that clasped hers! Not rough 
coarse hands like those he held; but supple, mobile hands of 
finest texture; the finest quality of flesh and blood and bone. 



172 


The Tree of the Garden 

His fingers had the eloquence of tongues. Speech was in 
them. They spoke with ardour and righteousness, imposing 
high doctrines on the flesh. Too high, too heavenly exalted 
for syke as her. 

Nay! they gave the answer to her question. It was not 
that he loved her any better than before. He only held her 
hands like this to fend them from his neck. He feared the 
captivity of her caresses that had frightened him last night. 
She was to blame, she knew. So anxious had she shown her¬ 
self to seize that shy, pale spirit of his love, for ever haunting 
and eluding her, that she had done violence to the house of 
modesty in which it dwelt. Fine natures like his were not 
to be won by rude assaults of flesh and blood. Such immodest 
sieges only shocked them. Now he was finished with her. 
She knew as well as well. He was finished with her. She 
felt the inexorable touch of pity in his hands; the mute com¬ 
passion of finality, bidding her good-bye. His nature was too 
fine to make reproaches, but she entertained no doubt of 
what he came resolved to tell her. All her senses were alive 
with the intelligence. To-day, to-morrow, some time, he would 
be gone. So much was unalterable. He relinquished her two 
hands the instant that the animation died out of them, and 
she stooped mechanically to her pail. She picked it up with 
the warm fingers so lately held by his, and for a moment 
it was as if she could not clearly recollect what use this 
clanking bucket served, or why she stood here with it. She 
had a vertiginous sense of blindness, as if the cowshed, or the 
cobbles, or maybe her own self stumbled. Why, as if all of 
them together rocked and foundered. 

“Aye ... I know!” she said with the sudden hoarseness 
of dejection; “I know what’s brought ye. I’se been expecting 
it. I could tell, moment you took hod o’ my hands.” 

“Listen, Thursday,” he said, and caught her by the sleeve. 
Her trouble noted it was only by the sleeve; a paltry finger- 
pinch of cotton plucked at, with no flesh in it. Why, he 
would not take her flesh. It was not fine enough for him. 


173 


The Tree of the Garden 

At heart he was ashamed of her; ashamed of having ever 
stooped to such a one for charity and friendship’s sake. But 
he’d said: “Listen, Thursday!” He’d spoke her name! Aye! 
maybe! He’d spoke it only ti soften blow prepared. To be a 
little kinder, friendlier at the last; indulge compunction in a 
little creditable tenderness, and so take leave. She knew it. 
Something told her. Happen it was something of the stern 
wisdom communicated by her dead mother, years ago. Or 
implanted in her blood. Aye! that was it more likely. Half 
the knowledge she had seemed to spring out of her own sub¬ 
stance, growing up like strange wild weeds that swelled into 
knop one day and put forth flaming flowers of experience. 

“I have something to say to you,” she heard him tell her; 
and his voice—for all he strove to make it very tender— 
sounded ill at ease. “There’s something I want to talk to you 
about. Something very important for us both. Will you 
listen to me, Thursday?” Important? Aye, that was it. That 
was it; not the name. Name was nothing. Name was just 
thrown in to please her. She knew what he meant to say. 

“You’ve come to say good-bye,” she told him, speaking 
thickly to the brick and mortar of the wall. “I know what 
you’ve come to say. Aye! I’se been expecting it. You’re 
leaving Whinsett. Ganning wum.” 

He could not answer all at once. The keen truth of her 
intuition took him by surprise. And in the pause—that was no 
longer, surely, than a breath—the girl drew weary knuckles 
across her eyes, like one still dazed with sleep, who throws 
curtains open to unwelcome daylight, and passed before him 
with her pail. 

“This isn’t milking, however,” she said. 

She smote the cow lightly on the flank. “Stan’ ower!” 
Seated herself on the three-legged stool; laid her cheek against 
the twitching, rotund belly, and tuned the first soft strings of 
milk against the tilted pail. There was no anger in her move¬ 
ment; only a great surrender, a mute submission to the dull 
decrees of duty with which her life was bound. In that brief 


174 


The Tree of the Garden 

passage from cowshed wall to milking stool she seemed to 
have traversed all the distance between the heaven of illusion 
and the earth of fact. She came back to reality like a pilgrim, 
weary with much wandering in a distant land of splendour, 
whose eyes began to droop at last beneath the strain of skies 
and sights too bright for them—taking up afresh, with vague 
unpractised hands, the tasks of life so long laid down. She 
leaned her cheek against the cow’s moist hide in the posture 
of one overweighted with desire to sleep, and her fingers 
drew but soulless spurts of milk that slid, pale and ghost-like, 
down the pail-side. All the old exultant music was gone out 
of her milking. For any chime that lingered in the sound 
of it, these threads might have been of moonlight that wan 
fingers coaxed from spectral udders into a pail that slept. 

And of a sudden her fingers, faltering strangely in their 
task, fell to her lap like things of lead. There they lay a 
little while, and then, with curious swiftness, she threw up a 
bare white forearm as if she warded off a threatened blow. 
She threw it up before her face, between her eyes and the cow’s 
belly that made a resting-place for it, and dreary tears like 
last night’s raindrops dripped into her lap. 

2 

Those noiseless tears fell cleansingly upon Guy Openshaw’s 
pities like gentle showers on green corn. All his nature needed 
tears just then; the tenderness of his purpose cried for them. 
For his purpose, when he came into the cowshed, was infinitely 
tender. When he took George Hardrip’s lass by the two 
hands and looked not overlong into her eyes and kissed her— 
his purpose was infinitely, marvellously tender. It melted in 
him; his breast was fluid with it. 

And there it clung. That was the trouble of this liquid 
tenderness. It clung to his bosom like indolent dew that rocks 
in the chalice of a flower, resisting all expulsion. He felt 
like one who bears a precious gift within his hand and knows 


The Tree of the Garden 175' 

not how to make the offering, but stands through shame and 
awkwardness in silence. 

It is true he had taken the girl’s hands out of apprehension 
for his neck; it is true his lips had sought to circumvent 
her mouth; it is true he had touched but the roll of upturned 
sleeve and evaded the blood-warmed bareness of her arm. But 
there dwelt a reason in these things. His purpose had need of 
them. It was so fine, so resolute, so somewhat overgrown 
and fragile, that he feared it might break to pieces In his hand. 
He feared that a breath, a word, a kiss, a hint of passion, 
might shiver it. For in the troubled hours of the past night, 
tossing betwixt contestant thoughts, truth’s revelation had 
burst upon him. With the swiftness of lightning; with the 
swiftness of buds that open after rain. All this love, surgent 
in his body, must be made licit. That was the answer to the 
problem. It must be consecrated—sanctified. These affections, 
coursing through his blood like chargers, must be broken in; 
their strength subdued to noble purposes. Love must lift itself 
above the flesh, where never ought it to have fallen. For love 
it was—love beyond question he knew it now to be. Once 
he had lifted it clear of the grosser parts of him—once he had 
looked at it by the pure light borrowed from his mother’s 
face, and he perceived its nature beyond a doubt. Love in 
very truth it was. Love it had always been. From the first 
moment that George Hardrip’s lass stood before him with 
the warm glints of his fire on her face, cut like a cameo 
against the sky, something had stirred within him. Something 
at once serene and pure and tender like a star beam, touching 
the soul with pale cool fingers from afar. That was the 
beginning of it. Why, no; it was not the beginning of it. 
Years before it had begun—on the very day George Hardrip’s 
lass took up her stubborn place in rags beside the smithy door. 
Those shy, insistent glances from her eyes, that all his troubled 
consciousness withstood, were the true beginning of it—though 
he knew it not till now. George Hardrip’s lass had recognised 
the lineaments of love more readily than he. And because he 


176 The Tree of the Garden 

strove to overcome the craving of the spirit, to quench the star 
that shone unwaveringly within him, a taint crept into the 
air from the corruption of the flesh. Deprived of its true light, 
the soul had sickened. Yes! that was it. He saw now how 
it was. The light itself had never wavered; it had beamed 
constant all the while, sustaining the higher nature in him with 
its clear ray. Love? Yes! love, be sure, it was. He loved 
her; and that being surely, truly so, what need had he to fear 
his mother’s heart? Had she not said, herself, true love was 
born in heaven—a child of God, lent to man for his ennoble¬ 
ment and guidance? Had she not said, herself, that nothing 
in the whole world mattered, measured against true love; 
that riches and honours and all gratified desires of the mundane 
heart were as dross or nought at all beside true love? Had not 
his mother told him this? To be sure she had—and more. 
Through her zeal to reach and feed the spiritual in him she 
had taught her son as much anaemic nonsense about true love 
as might have sickened hardier natures of it for ever; but 
her words came back with comfort to him now. This was 
the love she had predicted; the heaven-born love transcending 
all considerations of earth—all worldly arguments and scruples. 
Nor must love soar alone; the object loved must be uplifted 
with it. That was love’s glorious mission—to raise this splen¬ 
did spark of spirit out of the dreadful mires that clogged and 
fouled it. Yes! to lift George Hardrip’s lass clear of the soil 
from which she grew; clothe her mind and body with the 
vestments meet for them; instal her by the side of him in 
perfect fellowship; his sister, soul-mate, wife-to-be. Aye, any¬ 
thing you will, so it be possessed of spiritual sanction and 
zoned with holiness. 

All this distilled magnanimity of the soul lay in his purpose 
like holy water in a stoup. He bore it proudly, reverently, 
with fear. For what if she flouted this sacrament of love; 
laughed at holiness; would not ascend into the heaven where 
he was and sit beside him, companion of the stars? The dread 
of this it was that sealed his lips at first. And then she laid 


177 


The Tree of the Garden 

her eyes upon the inward of her arm, whilst tears flowed from 
her, and the way of purpose was made plain. For she sat 
sorrowing, and sorrow is ever holy. There was no earthliness, 
he told himself, in tears. No danger in them. Weeping, he 
might go to her. It was a god-like act to bring comfort to 
affliction, to kiss away the tears of grief from lashes heavy- 
laden. Whereat he went to her, stooped to her, put one arm 
around her neck. 

“Thursday! . . . Look at me. What is the matter?” 

Her grief was wonderfully docile. At his invocation she 
drew her face out of the sheath of folded arm that hid it 
and gave him the look he asked for. A look of splendour 
repudiating weakness; courage made insufferable with a smile. 

“Naught’s matter wi’ me,” she answered. “I’se all right 
noo. I can get on wi’ milking.” 

“But you were crying,” Guy Openshaw insisted tenderly. 
“Why?” 

“Aye, I was crying,” George Hardrip’s fas*, confessed, 
“. . . . while you spoke ti me. But you don’t want ti tek 
ni notice o’ that. Maybe it’s nobbut fondness. It’s not first 
time I’se cried. I’se cried before. Lots o’ lasses diz, wi’oot 
knowing reason. Sometimes it’s pride; sometimes it’s temper; 
sometimes it’s just fondness.” The cow, conscious of neglect, 
turned its horned head, shedding on her a bovine gaze of mild 
reproach, and she stroked its teat with temporising fingers that 
drew no milk. For Guy Openshaw’s arm lay comfortable upon 
her neck; his eyes dwelt softly on her face; the solicitude in 
his looks and tones and attitude was a thing too precious to 
relinquish all at once. If she moved, stirred, milked in earnest, 
it might be lost to her. She leaned her head upon his arm, 
cherishing contact with illusion, as a sleeper struggles against 
the awakening from a dream that flatters the desires. “Not 
that it was temper wi’ me, this time,” she assured her listener. 
“Don’t think I’se vexed wi’ ye. I’se not. Nay! I’se gotten 
naught to be vexed wi’ ye about. I knew very well you’d 
leave me some day. It’s not likely you’d want ti stop all 


178 The Tree of the Garden 

summer i’ Whinsett. I shouldn’t mysen, nobbut I was forced. 
. . . Mebbe it’s jealousy after all,” she added. “I’se jealous 
ti be left behind, where I can’t see ye, and be with ye all 
time. Jealous I’se not same as you, wi’ book-learning and 
fine speech and clothes an’ money ti do what ye like wi’. Aye, 
mebbe that’s it. As like as not it is—or main part of it. 
Sometimes I’se been fit ti hate ye for your voice; it seemed 
ti put so much betwixt us. I’se wished sometimes . . . Nay, 
I’se not wished it—I’se only wished it might ’a been . . . that 
you could come to be as poor as me, and ha’ ti arn your 
meat. Aye! When I’se laid i’ bed of a night I’se planned 
it all i’ my head. I’se thought: If only he hadn’t a penny. 
I’se thought: Nobbut he was forced to come back ti Whinsett 
ti seek his bread! I’se planned it oot as plain as plain. You 
was ti live wi’ us an’ work on land, an’ sleep i’ lartle bedroom 
just off o’ mine. Every night we was ti gan upstairs together, 
an’ leave doors part way open betwixt us, talking all while 
we got undressed; asking ‘Are you i’ bed yet?’—and mebbe 
coming ti see. Aye! lots o’ things. I think I mun’ a been 
oot o’ my senses at times—I saw things that plain—that plain 
I couldn’t bide sight on ’em. I didn’t fairlins know what 
to do wi’ myself some nights. I’se had to put my face i’ 
pillow to keep brightness oot 0’ my eyes. It was ower 
bright ti bide. Aye! for all I knew it wasn’t true, nor ever 
like ti be. For all I used ti tell mysen it didn’t stand ti 
sense. I tried ti mek believe it did, just same. And yet I 
know very well, if you hadn’t a penny to call your own . . . 
your pride would stand betwixt us. You’d liever starve than 
addle your meat i’ Whinsett, or tek aught fro’ syke as me. 
You’d hide yoursen sooner.” 

More she would have said, for she had the eyes and lips 
of a seer; but they heard just then the threatening evidences 
of George Hardrip without. He clomped across the fold- 
yard, filling it with the noisy eructations of a Silenus—awful 
sounds of human brutishness to Guy Openshaw’s revolted 




The Tree of the Garden 179 

ears, that rang like blasphemies against the sky and polluted 
the very purity of morning. 

“I'd best be milking . . .” the girl said quickly, and stooped 
forward to the cow’s udder. The farmer’s footsteps dragged 
soullessly over the foldyard cobbles; after a moment the cow¬ 
shed darkened, his gross body occluded the sunlight by the 
door, and abode there for a space in the silence of disfavour. 


3 

“Thosdy!” The rancid odours of stale beer seemed to cling 
about his utterance of the girl’s name. 

“Aye!” the girl responded as she stropped. 

“What’s ti doing? Milkin’?” 

“Aye!” 

“How mony coos has thoo gotten milked?” 

“I’se on wi’ this.” 

“Then thoo’s nobbut just started!” 

She made no answer, but drew the spurts of milk more 
tensely into the snow-white froth that smothered them. 

“There’s ower many milkers i’ cooshade,” George Hardrip 
decided sourly after a while. “Yan milker’s eneaf (enough) 
for three coos. Diz thoo mean ti be set here all day?” 

She kept silence still, bending assiduously over her work 
with flattened side-face and lowered eyelashes. And George 
Hardrip kept silence after this—the sort of accusing silence 
that carries on the mouth’s work and prolongs and multiplies 
recriminations. And Guy Openshaw kept silence, too, though 
the blood of indignation mounted up into his brain and filled 
his mouth with impotent hot phrases that he knew himself 
without the right to use. For after all, this was George 
Hardrip’s cowshed—not his. These were George Hardrip’s 
cows. Their milker, on whose smooth white neck he laid 
uneasy eyes, was George Hardrip’s grandchild; himself no 
more than an intruder. 

Ah! but that should all be changed. To free this fair 


180 The Tree of the Garden 

young life from the forces that oppressed it constituted the 
first, most sacred charge upon his love. Not much longer 
now should she suffer this daily cowshed drudgery; be subject 
to the rank ingratitude of these grudging eyes. George Hard- 
rip’s shameful shadow passed slowly away like the umbra of 
an eclipse, leaving the door once more to the brightness of 
undisputed sunlight, that seemed to riot in its regained liberty. 
They heard the sullen drag of his departing footsteps, and 
the girl turned on Guy Openshaw an instant look of under¬ 
standing and relief. 

“He’s gone,” she said. “It’s nobbut drink. He must ’a 

supped a deal last night. That’s second time he’s been on 

wi’ me this morning. Well! I’se used tiv it. I can bide 
it. If I’d never aught worse nor that to bide ... I shouldn’t 
need to grumble.” The look in her eyes softened; she leaned 
her head back as though invoking a ledge, an arm, to rest 

on. And Guy Openshaw slid down again into the posture 

so recently relinquished. Heads, arms, lips ... all fell back 
into their old relationship without a falter, and the cow heaved 
up a great sigh from the depth of her long-suffering bosom. 

“Thursday . . .” He had no hesitation now. George 
Hardrip’s gibe seemed to burn and tingle on the cheek of 
courage like the imprint of a blow. “How would you like 
to give up all this? To go away from Whinsett?” 

For a moment she returned no answer; her head lay very 
still upon his arm; her face upturned; her eyes gazing at 
infinity. 

“Go away?” she asked him vaguely, after a while. “Who 
wi’? You? ... I’d gan anywheres wi’ you. I’d do aught 
ye asked me ti, if that’s what ye mean.” 

It was not exactly what he meant. It was (he said) but 
the poorest fraction of what he meant. What he meant was: 
to go away from Whinsett to some nice place where she might 
be taken proper care of; where she might acquire those arts 
so coveted; to speak, to write, to read ... Yes! to give up 
all this farmyard drudgery and become what Nature had 


The Tree of the Garden 181 

intended her to be. She asked: “What’s that?” He said: 
“A lady.” 

“A lady! Me?” 

“Yes! you, Thursday. How would you like that?” 

There was a vibrant enthusiasm in his voice that should 
have kindled responsive rapture in her, but it only seemed to 
tire her understanding, for she closed her eyes and answered 
in a dull voice: 

“What’s use thinking syke things? I’se jealous I should 
never larn ti be onny different fro’ what I is noo. And 
even if I could . . . there’s plenty o’ ladies wi’oot troubling 
ti mek ’em out o’ syke stuff as me.” 

“But if I asked you, Thursday,” he pleaded. “If I said I 
wanted you to do this for my sake . . . Would you then?” 

“I don’t seem as if I can understand,” she said, still speak¬ 
ing with half lowered eyelids as if her comprehension dwelt 
apart in a place of perplexity. “There’s naught i’ wide world 
I wouldn’t do for ye, that I’se power ti do. I’se tried my 
best ti tell ye so, all time. But you don’t ask me for what 
I’se got ... or what I can gi’e ye. It’s for summut I haven’t 
got; summut that’ll mebbe never be mine to gi’e. What for 
do ye want me ti try and be a lady? What good would it do 
either on us? I don’t suppose I ever could. I doot I’se ower 
and ower stupid ti larn. But whatever I larned . . . what¬ 
ever folk larned me, I know very well they could never larn 
me ti care more for you nor what I diz noo. Nay! neabody 
could.” 

He said: “You do care for me, then, Thursday?” 

She answered: “Aye!”—and something choked the full¬ 
ness of confession that surged behind that one terse word. 

“And I care for you,” he told her. For now the tenderness 
of purpose struggled to disclose itself; to break free of all the 
trammels of words and flesh encumbering it, and to reveal its 
spiritual splendours to George Hardrip’s lass. “Care for you? 
I do more than care for you. Love is the word I mean and 


182 The Tree of the Garden 

want to say. Do you hear me, Thursday? It’s true. Listen 
to me. I love you.” 

She turned her open eyes upon him for a space incredulously, 
and said, without rancour: “I only wish I could believe it. 

But I can’t. You can’t an’ all. You’re nobbut mekkin’ fun 

» >> 
o me. 

“Fun!” he protested, pained by her inability to put belief 
in him at such a solemn hour of his faith. “Thursday! All 
this is most deadly earnest. To me, at least.” 

“Are ye sure?” she asked him. “Why did ye kiss me like 
you did, an’ run away fro’ me last night? And why did ye 
click hod o’ my hands this morning when ye cam’ inti cooshade, 
so as I couldn’t put ’em round your neck?” 

“Last night, Thursday,” he answered her, “I didn’t really 
know how much I cared for you. Everything seemed changed; 
I scarcely recognised my own self. I wanted to go where I 
could be quite alone and think, but as soon as ever I began to 
think . . . then I was quite sure. I was sure when I came 
into the cowshed. I took your hands because ... Yes, be¬ 
cause I wanted nothing to come between us, Thursday. Not 
even so much as a kiss. Ki 96 es aren’t fair to you—they aren’t 
fair to me. The sort of love I feel for you is deeper than kisses; 
kisses only seem to sap and undermine it; they drag love down. 
Do you understand what I mean, Thursday?” 

Nay! She doubted he talked ower deep and larned for syke 
as her. But she liked to listen to him, and he said he loved her! 
She couldn’t seem to mek hersen believe it, and yet she could 
bide ti hear him tell her so all day. She felt as if she wanted 
ta fall asleep over the sound of it, and sleep happy for a month 
o’ Sundays. Nobbut she could fall asleep wi’ syke a sound as 
that in her ears she could bide well enough not ti wakken 
again. Nay, she couldn’t forget it! To think of him telling 
her he loved her . . . here beside of her i’ cooshade, when 
she’d thought (all while) he’d come ti break it off wi’ her an’ 
gan wum. But what had books and learning got ti do wi’ him 
loving her? If he loved her already, as he said he did, what 


The Tree of the Garden 183' 

better would books an’ learning mek it? Let them love one 
another while they’d chance. Chance didn’t always come twice 
down same street. Love shouldn’t want to try an’ larn ower 
much. 

“But can’t you see, Thursday,” Guy Openshaw explained 
to her: “It isn’t that I don’t love you for yourself, just as you 
are. I do. Only I want to break down the least suspicion of 
inequality likely to come between us—so that you will never 
want to hate me for my voice again or envy me my education. 
It’s not so much myself, Thursday. It’s your own dear self I’m 
thinking about, so that ... so that one day, when you are 
my wife ...” 

“Wife!” said Thursday Hardrip, with dim uncertain lips, 
as if this word were startling, new, and strange to her. “When 
I’se your wife! Nay! It sounds all like naught ti me. I seem 
as though I can’t mek oot what it is you’re talking aboot!” 

“Surely you understand?” Guy Openshaw exclaimed. “You 
must! Do you think I should be talking seriously to you like 
this, Thursday, unless I meant that some day—if only you 
care for me "well enough—I want you to be my wife?” 

She lay quite still on his arm for a little while, still looking 
through her half-lowered eyelids at the cowshed wall beyond 
the cow’s broad body. Then with a swift movement she threw 
both her hands before her face and laughed, or shuddered, in 
the darkness of their joined palms. 

“I think I mun be dreaming,” she said, dropping her hands 
upon her lap and looking on all sides about her as if to seek true 
vision-hold upon reality. “Aye, I think I mun be dreaming. 
Your wife? What ... me! Thursday Hardrip. Aud George 
Hardrip’s lass, that tented coos i grass lane and scared crows 
i’ springtime off o’ land! You’re laughing at me. Aye, I can 
see it i’ your lips. You’re saying: ‘How much is lass fond 
enough to believe?’ You’re saying: ‘She’d believe aught 
onnybody telt her!’ ” 

He took hold of her hand. “Thursday! I am not laughing 
at you. Look at me. Please! I mean it—every word of it.” 


184 The Tree of the Garden 

But she did not look at him. “Nay,” she said, “it dizn’t 
stand ti sense you’d ever wed a lass like me. I never thought 
on it. I never looked for it. I know mysen I’se not fit ti be 
wife ti syke as you. All your friends would cry shame on ye. 
An’ they’d do right an’ all. Nay, I shouldn’t dare to wed ye. 
I should be ower frightened. I should be ower much ashamed. 
I shouldn’t forgi’e mysen. I think too much about ye for 
that” 

He held her hand in his. He held both her hands in his. 
Yes! and now that he perceived the lowly shrinking of her 
spirit from the strong light of this love revealed, it grew more 
splendid—more courageous, pure and proud. All his doubts 
and trepidations of these recent days fell away from him like 
the divested garments of a swimmer; he strode clear of them, 
stripped for his strong, keen purpose. This girl with the 
troubled and resistant eyes, whose hands he held and drew 
towards him, was life’s one cherished object worth the win¬ 
ning. Nothing else in all the wide world mattered. She 
trembled like spilled wine betwixt his fingers, as if next 
moment her fluid self would slip through the incontinence of 
what sought to hold it, and escape him. 

“But if I beg of you, Thursday!” he urged her. “If I say: 
‘Will you do what I ask you for my sake?’ Will you do it to 
prove how much you care for me? You say you would do any¬ 
thing for me. Will you do that?” 

She said weakly: “Dean’t ask it o’ me. Ask me summut 
else. Ask me summut easier. Nay ... if you want me as 
you say ye do, tek me. Tek me wi’oot asking. Do aught ye 
like wi’ me. But don’t talk o’ wedding me. No good’s like 
to come of it. It’ll only mek trouble for us both. It’s not a 
thing that’s ever like to happen; it’s nobbut a thing to dream 
about an’ mek believe. Aye! let’s mek believe: that’ll be better. 
Let’s mek believe we’re wed, us two. Neabody need know, 
an’ it’ll hurt neabody. When time comes for ye to gan, ye 
can gan. I wean’t try an’ hinder ye. Fault’s mine, I know. 
I couldn’t let ye be. I was for ever runnin’ after ye an’ 


The Tree of the Garden 185 

botherin’ ye. \ ou’d never ’a gi’en me a thought, or had aught 
ti do wi’ me wi’oot I had.” 

He said: “Thursday, I should have given you a thought. 
I did give you a thought. I’m always thinking of you. You’re 
the first, the only, girl I have ever cared for or thought about. 
And I want you for always. Not just here in Whinsett and 
for a little time—to go away and leave behind; but for always. 
Will you do what I ask you? Will you give yourself to me? 
Will you? Will you, Thursday? Say yes; say yes you will. 
Let me hear you say it with your own lips, in your own voice. 
Say yes, you will!” 

“Aye,” said George Hardrip’s lass after awhile, in a despond¬ 
ent level voice, like a last sunbeam that lies, without energy, 
on grass or wall. “If you want me to, I will. I can’t deny ye 
aught. I doubt I shouldn’t. I dursn’t think o’ what I’se say¬ 
ing. It meks me frightened ti’ think aboot it.” 

“Say: ‘I give myself to you . . . for always!’ ” he prompted 
her. “Yes. Say that, Thursday. Let me hear you say that.” 

“I gi’en mysen to you . . . for always,” George Hardrip’s 
lass recited. “Is that what ye mean? Diz that content ye?” 

“And you will have faith in me, Thursday? You will 
believe in me? You won’t ever doubt my love again?” 

She said: “I’ll try. I’ll do my best.” 

He drew both her blunt and sunburnt hands into his bosom, 
her face following. She gave him her lips—limp lips of un¬ 
conditional surrender, without warmth or passion in them; 
lips as chaste in their bewilderment as the purest, dullest love 
could seek or hope for. And when they had pledged their troth, 
and Guy Openshaw had charged her, with the blazing lips of 
conquest and of inexperienced youth: “Remember, Thurs¬ 
day! you are mine now. You belong to me. Nothing . . . 
nobody must ever come between us!”—he let go of her hands, 
so long held, and without a word she turned to her interrupted 
milking like one who dreams. 


186 The Tree of the Garden 


4 

She was his. In the first exultant glory of possession, Guy 
Openshaw transcended the doubting limits of his own nature. 
Fears, perplexities and mean misgivings seemed as if they blazed 
to nothing in the splendid fire that signilised this object gained; 
the consummation of fine purpose. She was his. All else 
receded from the sight. His mind kept holiday like some tri¬ 
umphant capital that rejoices amid the brilliance of flags and 
flowers. Ah! it was a proud and glorious thing to win the 
love of woman—to be the custodian of a life like this; to feel 
oneself lord of every glance and gesture; to cradle these precious 
qualities in proud affection, for all the world as if they were 
living offspring begotten of the love that realised them; to seem 
in part their parent and creator. Best, most marvellous of all, 
perhaps, to look upon the object of one’s love and see oneself 
within, a love within a love. Yes! Deep in that breathing 
bosom, behind those eyes and sheltering lashes, in the sacrarium 
of her soul, wrapped in every tender thought like fine altar 
linen—loved, worshipped, and adored. To say: ‘This is my 
home, my heart’s home; my dwelling-place for love to live in/ 

Those were the feelings he had. Those were some of the 
feelings he had. Not all. He had other feelings; feelings 
that moved about within him, wearing no flowers, no favours; 
taking no part in these rejoicings; not shouting, not throwing 
up their hats; quiet, sober, unvociferous feelings. But he 
barely noticed them. One does not notice life’s sobrieties when 
hearts hold festival. She was his! Yes: that was it. That 
was the supreme fact for joy to cling to. 

As for George Hardrip’s lass, she passed with her pail from 
cow to cow in a state of walking slumber; drew milk with 
the fingers of a somnambulist. There seemed a weight upon 
her brain professing itself to be most joyous reality, and yet 
all the while endued with the leaden attributes of a night¬ 
mare—a thing unliftable. 

Strange, the inconsistency of human hope, that lives on what 


The Tree of the Garden 187 

it lacks and faints when fed; the folly of the human heart, for 
ever craving joys beyond its strength to bear. In secret thought, 
in those immense nocturnal silences when she lay sleepless on 
her bed, her courage had been capable of all things. She had 
filled the emptiness of life with wild imaginings, feeding her 
hunger with most monstrous fictions, imposing no limits on her 
fancy. Aye! had given herself to him a hundred ways, a hun¬ 
dred times; devised a hundred nets of cunning to ensnare his 
love; had conquered and been conquered; proffered and 
accepted; made herself bee-drunk with the surreptitious nectar 
stolen from his memoried lips. Intoxicated by the very hope¬ 
lessness of her passion she had pursued him unrelaxingly. Sheer 
despair had lent a sort of sanction to insanity. For she had 
never hoped. So much was certain. She had never hoped. She 
might have closed at whiles the eyelids of the senses; suffered 
them to swoon delectably at will with her; but she had never 
lost all sight of life’s realities. 

And now . . . something more preposterous than her wild¬ 
est dreams had come to pass. This god she worshipped wanted 
her. Aye ... he wanted her—desired her—loved her. His 
lips had moved to tell her so. She had seen them move with 
her own eyes, and her incredulous ears had caught the strange 
sounds floating from them; sounds like faint bells borne on 
the breezes; like scents of blossoms bringing messages too 
poignant sweet for the understanding. Desires had put on 
substance of reality, and all about her grew unreal. He wanted 
her! This tall, fair, slender god, with flesh like sunbeams and 
eyes like liquid stars; that stood beside her resting glances on 
her neck and shoulder whilst she milked dream cows, with 
dream fingers, in a dream cowshed—he wanted her. Not to 
take in arms of fierce possession, to pluck for passion’s sake and 
bruise and toy with and fling aside when sated, after the usual 
way of gods and men; but to keep for ever, to raise her up 
beside him to a place of exaltation. To wed her! Out of all 
the women in the world he might have had—to choose her. 
Her! Thursday Hardrip. George Hardrip’s lass. Her soul 


188 The Tree of the Garden 

should have sung; her pride should have laughed in her. And 
instead, the burden of her unimaginable blessedness seemed to 
weigh her down, as last night’s rain—passionately though the 
thirsty flowers desired it—dashed their stunned blossoms to 
the dust. 

Aye! that was it. He had given her more happiness than 
she had asked for; more than she could suffer; more than her 
heart could hold. Aforetime she had felt free to look at him. 
She had milked with her eyes on his face, registering every 
expression that passed over it; had tendered her smiles in ex¬ 
change for his; had lived on the look and sound of him. Now 
all at once she dared no longer use her eyes. She bent them 
intently on her hands, eclipsing and disclosing the cow’s tugged 
teats in dreary alternation; upon the slanted pail whose shining 
sides sank slowly out of sight beneath the iridescent foam that 
mounted in it. 

And all the while, above the music of her milking, she heark¬ 
ened curiously to Guy Openshaw’s voice; responded “yea” and 
“nay” to him as he divulged his splendid purpose, throwing 
open gateways to futurity. She was td go to school, it seemed. 
School! The word dropped upon her understanding dully, 
with the thud of fallen fruit. Why . . . not perhaps to school. 
To some place much less terrible than school, where (under 
kindly hands) she might be taught the things she lacked; 
to speak, to write, to read, to sit at table, to eat her meat, to 
play, to sing—Aye! everything that ladies did or should do, she 
was to learn. 

It would entail their separation, of course (he told her). 
Aye! she was jealous it would. She mud ’a been sure it would. 
But think, Thursday! . . . whilst she was hard at work for 
his sake she would have the satisfaction of knowing him hard 
at work for hers. For he was resolved to go to college now 
without delay. All this while of their probation they would 
write to each other, of course. Yes! Every day they would write 
to each other, confiding their inmost thoughts and feelings. 
And he might even come to see her now and then. Yes! that 


The Tree of the Garden 189 

might be possible, Thursday. And all vacations, naturally, 
would be spent together. What did she say to that, Thursday. 
Think of it! How they would count the tardy days to each 
fresh meeting and rush into one another’s arms like two ecstatic 
drops of water, to renew their love, and win fresh faith, fresh 
courage, strength, enthusiasm, for their next separation. Until 
that glorious time when they should unite their lives forever. 
For he was sure of his heart. Nothing would ever change his 
love for her. It would abide all things. Was she sure of her 
heart, Thursday? Was she? What? Nay . . . stop that 
incessant milking for one moment; he could not hear a sound 
upon her lips. Was she? He slipped his hand beneath her 
chin and held it up like tender wall-fruit to the solicitude of 
the eye, ripening admission on her lips with a look. Was she, 
Thursday ? 

Aye! she was. Only she couldn’t reckon things up. It all 
seemed strange, too good for syke as her. She felt afraid to 
wake up any minute and find she’d nobbut dreamed it. 

Dreamed it! Why . . . whatever had come over her, 
Thursday? No smile upon her lips; no brightness in her 
eyes; her eyelids drooping all the time as if the mere weight 
of their lashes were too heavy for them. Surely . . . surely 
she didn’t regret what she had told him? 

Nay, he was ti tek no notice on her. She’d come all right 
after awhile, maybe, when she’d gotten used ti things. Coo- 
shade felt strange and close of a sudden, what wi’ coos an’ 
warm milk i’ pail and her milkin’ an’ all. Place looked dif¬ 
ferent, someways. She couldn’t think it was same spot she’d 
been used ti sit in. And she relapsed into the entrancement 
of her milking; into the rapt contemplation of those alternating 
hands. 

And the voice went on. It was essential for both their sakes 
that he should go home and speak to his mother. Yes! he must 
do that, Thursday. It was only right she should be told of this 
great happiness without delay. 7l he mention of the word 
“mother” sent a pang through the listener’s heart—a fear, an 


190 


The Tree of the Garden 

apprehension that almost shook her hands into her lap once 
more; but she closed her eyes a moment’s space and quickened 
her milking with blind despair. His mother? What! he meant 
to tell his mother. Aye . . . (her reason whispered) she’d 
done right ti doubt. His mother would never in this world 
consent. Never. It wasn’t like she should. What was he 
saying? His mother was his best friend? The best friend a 
son could have? . . . Aye, it sounded grand enough (she told 
herself) i’ way he said it! But he didn’t understand women 
same as what she did. He understood naught aboot ’em. 
What did he want ti gan an’ tell his mother for ? He was too 
fine, too good by nature, to know what women was. He didn’t 
know what she was, and for all her trying she couldn’t seem 
ti mek him understand. Nay, she dursn’t try no longer. Nob- 
but he suspected what was at bottom on her . . . an’ he’d gan 
away for good an’ all. Wed him ? Aye! a likely thing. What 
sort of a lass would she be ti tek advantage of his goodness an* 
bring shame an’ wretchedness upon him? Not that she’d ever 
ha’ chance on it. His own mother would watch that! 

“Stan’ ower! Pollie!” 

The last rinsings were drawn from the last depleted udder. 
She rose up from the milking stool, and Guy Openshaw relieved 
her of the frothy pail. 

“Let me take it, Thursday.” 

She drew a wrist across her pearled forehead, but the gesture 
was merely a pretext to shirk encounter with his eyes. For 
their respective attitudes were curiously changed. In those 
early days of friendship it was she whose eyes had held suprem¬ 
acy, forcing issues on his. Now they sought to hide themselves 
from sight—like fugitives; like things grown conscious of their 
shame. It was he who had her at his mercy—who pressed 
looks upon her that she lacked the courage to accept. So great 
was her cowardice that he must almost plead with her for each 
glance shyly, briefly given. “Thursday . . . where are your 
eyes? Look at me. You’re not frightened, surely!” 

Nay, she was not frightened. But she had the despondent 


The Tree of the Garden 191 

sense that this love was on a sudden grown too grand for syke 
as her. Its grandeur embarrassed her like a fine silk gown. 
She was nobbut a farm lass; such rich adornment of her rude 
affections made her seem almost ridiculous in her own sight. 
Aye! it was a pity he could not have taken her as she’d intended; 
not tried to see her, make her, other than she was. And yet . . . 
for all her shrinking, she clung to him. Some urgent need of 
him broke through the awkward reticence of her lips when he 
took his leave at last. 

“Shall I be seeing you again . . . happen?” she asked him; 
and he drew back and looked at her. 

“See me again, Thursday? Why! . . . whatever do you 
think ?” 

Nay, she nobbut thought. She didn’t rightlins know what 
she thought. She couldn’t tell what made her ask question. 
What she meant ti say was: when would he be gannin’ wum ? 

He told her: “To-morrow.” 

To-morrow ? Why, it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. There’d 
be this afternoon, she told herself. Aye, and this evening an’ 
all, before she lost him. 

“Dean’t gan!” she begged him, with a sudden faintness of 
supplication. “Dean’t gan ti-morn. Dean’t gan si soon. It’s 
ower soon. Gan some other day. Stop at Whinsett a bit.” 

She did not plead: “Stop because I ask ye to; because 
I want ye to ... ” But it showed in her eyes; it was divulged 
in the helplessness of her hands. All her body protested its 
fear of losing him, and gave Guy Openshaw assurance of that 
dependent love of him so craved. 

“Do you want me to, Thursday?” 

“Aye . . . Do.” 

It was all she answered, but a whole heart’s kingdom was 
in the words. He gave her fears the respite they desired. He 
would not go to-morrow. He would stay with her awhile. 
A day or two. He would stay for her sake. 

She watched him go, and with each step taken he grew 
dearer to her. Terribly dearer! The dearness of him was 


192 


The Tree of the Garden 

like a pain about the heart, that tightened as he went; that 
strangled her with cruel hands of love. From time to time he 
turned and waved his hand to her; took and waved the towel 
in the clear sunlight, and she held up an arm that gleamed to 
him, inanimate, like an ingot of pale gold. 

Aye! what a marvellous thing a real true gentleman was; so 
fine, so clean, so noble, generous and pure. No wonder real 
ladies could live happy all their lives wi’ syke to love them and 
look after them. Poor folk didn’t know what true love was. 
They hadn’t learning enough to understand it. She watched 
him till the green hedgerows put their jealous arms about him 
and folded him from sight. It was as if the sunlight sank 
behind a cloud. His wife! Nay, she couldn’t get ower it. 
What i’ the world possessed him! It could never be. It was 
fondness. This bright and dream-like happiness she held so 
impotently in her hands was a jewel too precious ever to be 
worn on syke a bosom as hers. 


5 

Guy Openshaw abode another week in Whinsett. At base 
he was no fool, and for all the fervour that exalted him he felt 
in heart as little anxious to confront his mother as George 
Hardrip’s lass desired to let him go. He spoke of this impend¬ 
ing interview with courage, nonchalance, conviction; swag¬ 
gered on the subject even, to make them both believe it had no 
terrors for him. But each acceded day gave him a condemned 
man’s respite. He breathed more freely the moment he knew 
his mother a whole twenty-four hours removed from him. 
For he could come to no decision as to how this terrific topic 
might best be broached. 

But he was not always thinking of his mother. Only now 
and then. Intermittently, when the thought of her crept 
through his happiness like a fine pain, like a bitter taste escap¬ 
ing through the sweetness of the flavour in which it is concealed. 
For these last days spent in the company of George Hardrip’s 


193 


The Tree of the Garden 

lass were as a balm to troubled conscience. Life was so delec¬ 
table that no price, save cash, seemed too great to pay for it. 

It is true he had had the thought to leave Whinsett at once. 
But that resolve had only confessed the cowardice of discre¬ 
tion. He had been frightened of the girl’s arms, hands, lips, 
persuasions; of his own weakness; of dreadful misadventures 
to the purity of love. For, above everything, before all, it was 
essential that this love be kept pure. For all their sakes it must 
be kept unsullied. Only such a love as that should he dare to 
divulge to his mother’s eyes; a love without defilement, con¬ 
ferring pride and strength on him and gentleness on her. And 
each day that he stayed at Whinsett love justified his faith; 
gained in purity and wisdom. It was marvellous how love 
cleansed itself; how strong it grew, how delicate, how gentle. 
It had the strength of a lion, the softness of a bird, the clarid 
purity of running water. A sort of sheath grew over it, like that 
that wraps the beach buds from sharp winds and the impru¬ 
dence of their own desires in spring. A veil of delicate pudicity; 
a web of finespun shame that draped their love and interposed 
between it and their thoughts. Why, the truth was, before 
this metamorphosis love had been but a creeping thing; a cater¬ 
pillar that crawled and fed on fleshly substance and desires, 
lacking yet the wings to lift it clear of earth. With truth came 
wings. Ah! such spreading pinions made all the difference to 
love. Love crawled no longer, ravaging the tender leafage of 
its own green thoughts. Love flew. High above the flesh love 
flew. In those early days when love devoured its tortuous blind 
course through the darkness of the body towards the burning 
light divined beyond, one touch of the girl’s hand had been 
enough to cloud the clearness of his soul with thoughts. The 
smoothness of her skin disturbed him; the whiteness of her 
bosom. Never had he plumbed the true depths of her eyes. 
Always, when he sought to see how deep they were, a live 
look—lurking in their profundity—leaped swiftly to the sur¬ 
face, alert and syren-like, to captivate his glance and draw it 
down. Always into their regards extraneous qualities had 


194 


The Tree of the Garden 

crept, compromising the essential purity of them. But now, 
saving alone that newborn shyness which seemed the very skein 
and soul of purity, their looks were clear and unashamed. From 
touch of hands all vague disquiet vanished. One frank and 
honest quality seemed mutual to their flesh, in which nothing 
promiscuous or illicit stirred. Love permeated them like warm 
and healthy sunlight; no more. It was marvellous how its 
beams quickened and purified them. When George Hardrip’s 
lass stooped to her pail with out-thrust leg, or showed the fine¬ 
ness of her evening stockings at a stile, Guy Openshaw’s vision 
scorned to take advantage. His purity went blind as marble. 
For she was his, now and henceforth, part of his own self and 
honour; raised to a high seat above the senses. Love grew most 
wondrous considerate and polite. Love treated George Hard¬ 
rip’s lass like any princess of the blood. And—it was a small 
thing, but love noted it—George Hardrip’s lass no longer sat 
at milking in the morning with the neck part of her cotton 
frock unfastened, and her white breast exposed. He had said 
no word, but love’s own lips had whispered to her. She divined 
her obligations towards this new, this sacred love. The white¬ 
ness of her bosom no longer embarrassed his eyes. It was a 
great step gained, that filled him with an infinite content. For 
it showed he had not erred in the placing of his heart. Her 
instincts were sensitive and sure; they did her modesty, his 
judgment, credit. 

6 

Yes! wrapped in her dream of unreality, George Hardrip’s 
lass sought only how to please him. She did but practise the 
same deceits to win his favour and regard that he practised 
to preserve his mother’s good opinion. How to serve his love 
and keep it; that was the single problem of her days. To such 
an end there was naught she would not do. For though her 
heart beat in a breast of clay, passion and earth composed her 
not alone. Her nature owned nobler things than these. Love! 
Aye, a deep, true, allegiant love of Mrs. Openshaw’s son pos- 


The Tree of the Garden 195 

sessed her. A love so lowly and intense as to seek no better 
guerdon than the right to immolate itself for him. She had 
offered him, after the best fashion her untutored self knew how, 
the best that she had. And he would not take it. Why, it was 
scarce to be supposed he would. She knew well enough it 
was unworthy of him—but what else had she to give? What 
else could she lay at his feet to prove the depth and sincerity 
of her feeling? She had no fine speech to serve her; no blos¬ 
soms of the mind to offer him. She could milk. Aye! Make 
butter, serve pigs. Aye! Dress poultry. Aye! Cook, scour, 
darn and sew. But how did such accomplishments help love? 
All this while her hope and one concern had been her body. 
So to beautify it that it should be acceptable to him as an offer¬ 
ing, one day. Burnish the gloss upon her lashes; soften the 
texture of her skin; steep her hands in buttermilk to purge 
the coarseness from them. If it had been possible she would 
have turned her body into a pleasaunce for his delight; thrown 
it open like a garden for his solace and recreation. That would 
have been reward enough for love like hers, that he should find 
pleasure in her. 

But it seemed he did not need her body. He had a soul 
above syke things. It would ’a made matters simpler if he had 
’a done. Bodies was what plain country folk was used to and 
had been brought up to understand. When they judged a beast 
they touched and felt it. Nobbut he’d ta’en her, she’d ’a had 
comfort o’ knowing he wanted her. It would have been a way 
to repay him for sitting i’ cowshade with her of a morning. 
But that was not his road. That was not the way with the 
like of him; he’d been too high larned and well brought up. 
He thought naught about syke fond things as kissing and clip¬ 
ping. Why, no more did she—so long as she mud be perpetu¬ 
ally near him; so long as she mud have pleasure of his voice 
and smile; let the very life she lived draw breath out of the 
presence of him; watch his every footstep when he left her, 
saying: “I belong him, noo. He loves me. He wants me. 
I’se to wed him yan o’ these days.” 


196 The Tree of the Garden 

Not that she believed it. Nay, not that she believed it. But 
since that was the way of things with him, the glorious delusion 
he bade her share; she made believe. She humoured him. It 
was surely little enough he asked of her. Not many round 
Whinsett would ’a been content ti ask so little. They would 
’a wanted some token of her, some pledge, something more 
tangible than words or fancies, to prove that love was no one¬ 
sided matter, but honest give-and-take. Aye! there could be no 
mistake he was a gentleman. And she loved him. She’d love 
him any road he liked. 

When he took her by the finger-tips and handed her sedately 
over stiles where giggling country lasses would have jumped 
into strong arms and been crushed against broad chests—it was 
love. And when they walked together—no longer criss-crossed 
in each other’s arms, with her head upon his shoulder and the 
sound of his voice in her ears like the vague, far sea-surge heard 
in shells—but erect and keenly conscious of the obligations 
owed to one another and the world ... it was love. Country 
folk might laugh and call syke walking fondness, but they 
didn’t know. They hadn’t his education and goodness—his 
wisdom. It was love, he said. That was good enough for her. 
She’d trust his word. Aye! let other couples gan to their secret 
trysting spots i’ corn and clover; lig doon all their length i’ 
coltsfoot and rank herbage on ledges of sunken undercliff, wi’ 
sea lapping at their feet. Let ’em hug i’ clumps o’ bedstraw, 
staring up at sky betwixt their kisses till stars settled down on 
them like dew, that close while they could almost touch ’em 
wi’ their fingers; pluck ’em as if they was quivering wet bram¬ 
bles. Aye! let ’em do this. Let ’em do this and as much more 
as they had a mind to. She did not envy them. She could 
afford to pity them out of the fullness of content for the pur¬ 
blind ignorance that thought true love was to be acquired so. 
Herself was but a learner, that she knew, picking out the let¬ 
ters of love’s alphabet under guidance; but there was more joy 
in such a school of feelings than in the utmost liberty of un¬ 
tutored passion. Land must be tilled and farms tended to make 


i 9 7 


The Tree of the Garden 

them yield finer crops, a richer produce. Love was same. Soil 
it grew from could be that starved and hungered while naught 
but wicks would thrive on it at last. Maybe if she’d had her 
way she mud ’a overcropped their love; ta’en too much out 
of it; gi’en no heed to manishment and rotation. Spoilt all, 
like a greedy farmer that grudges his land the very straw it 
grows, and robs the heart out of it wi’ crops. Aye! that was 
way of looking at it. 


7 

Guy Openshaw abode a second week in Whinsett. A second 
seven full days of tremulous delight and trepidation; of joy so 
precarious and fragile-fine that the senses almost feared to seek 
to realise it, lest their too eager fingers should do it hurt. Day 
added to day, like drops dispensed from the vial of a chary 
alchemist; electuaries given to the soul; potent drugs of time 
disguised in honey. Each was necessary to the other; for their 
great happiness seemed threatened the instant it was not shared. 
In solitude too many thoughts crept in. Happiness should not 
be suffered to admit too many thoughts; invariably they end by 
doubting. And then, it was always just this one day they had 
between them that lent such preciousness to time. Never a 
week; only a day—that must be made the most of while it 
lasted. Sunday came round again, with its bells and sunlight; 
with its broad peace spread out upon the world like wings; with 
its heart-searching scents wafted up from the bosom of the 
earth, that seemed like silent prayers or hymns too fervid for 
articulation. They walked again along the cliff, turning eyes 
upon their silhouettes protracted over the golden beach below; 
went wrapped in the benediction of the chimes from Peterwick. 
Nearly to Dimmlesea they walked. They passed the spot 
where the storm had burst on them. Away to the left George 
Hardrip’s lass descried above the bank the clump of close, low- 
growing hawthorn to which she had led Guy Openshaw for; 
shelter. The thought was in her mind, but she gave it no utter¬ 
ance. Nay, she wouldn’t bid him look. She’d say naught. 


198 The Tree of the Garden 

Maybe he’d be vexed wi’ her if she mentioned it. For already 
her love had made great strides; had learned much for its 
uplifting under his daily care. They walked back proudly in 
clear broad evening light, talking without constraint or fond¬ 
ness, for all the world to see. Before half-past nine they stood 
together by the gate of George Hardrip’s cottage. Aye! it was 
very early to be taking leave; to be letting go of one another. 
You may depend it was. But he’d explained it very careful 
to her, and she was jealous she understood. He’d told her he 
thought only of her good name; they mustn’t gi’e people the 
least chance to talk about her. As though people ever waited 
for chance before they talked, i’ country. Do what one would, 
they’d talk. Naught could stop ’em. Why . . . even Dib- 
ner—the silent Dibner that plodded his way along the Whinsett 
road that night as though he hadn’t a thought or word in his 
head—even Dibner had taken early opportunity to say to her: 

“Thoo’s gotten as far as coortin’ then! How did ye come 
on under aud thorn hedge o’ Sunday? Maybe thoo didn’t 
notice storm where thoo was!” 

What could she answer? She could only answer: 

“Who told you I was under aud thorn hedge?” 

“Somebody.” 

“Tell somebody to mind his own business,” she said. “Who’s 
somebody?” 

“Aj^e,” Dibner responded with laughing unconcern. “Thoo’d 
like ti know.” 

“Not me!” she said, and passed on, wondering whose eyes 
they were that had pierced the thickness of their shelter on that 
Sunday night, or seen them quit or enter it. Why, maybe 
Dibner’s self—or one no better—that had followed them for 
badness, as lads did i’ country. Not that it mattered to her, 
any more than it did to them. She’d nothing to be ashamed 
of. Only she dared not disclose the matter to Mrs. Open- 
shaw’s son. That she dared not do. It might vex him. It 
might depreciate her value in his sight to think that folks was 
talking about her already; cause him to deem her, on that 


199 


The Tree of the Garden 

account, the less worthy of his notice. Aye, it was a trying 
thing to be stuck upon a pedestal, with one’s feet higher than 
one’s head had been before. To be given charge of a brand 
new, spotless reputation. One might as well put on a new 
frock i’ cowshade wi’ any hope to keep it clean. 

. . . On an inevitable morning, after milking time, after 
breakfast, after the deputy-postman had passed on his way to 
Whinsett, propelling himself along the dusty, road with a great 
hedge-stake the height of his shoulder, Guy Openshaw sought 
her. He came as prearranged; she was waiting for him, star¬ 
ing under the vizor of her tilted hand into the distant sunlight. 
But at sight of him her courage sank. She knew what brought 
him this time. She knew what he concealed in his coat pocket. 

And she entertained no doubt at all when he said to her in 
his preparatory voice: 

“I’ve something to show you, Thursday.” 

“Aye,” she interposed quickly, “I know.” 

“You know? What do you know?” 

“It’s fro’ your mother. She wants ye back. She’s wrote 
for ye.” 

“How did you know that?” 

“I knew. I could tell at once. You walked wi’ your hand 
i’ your pocket. You had hod o’ letter.” 

“But I often walk like that.” 

“Not same road, ye don’t. You smiled different, an’ all. 
Beside, I knew she’d wrote to ye. Postman telt me.” 

“Yes, but . . . My mother writes every day, Thursday. 
Surely you ought to know that by this time. That’s nothing 
to go by.” 

“Mebbe not. All same, summit seemed to tell me. I’se 
been expecting it a day or two.” 

“Expecting it! How?” 

“I could tell fro’ way she wrote i’ last letter she’d begun to 
want ye back again. Why, I don’t blame her. It stands 
to sense. I should feel same an’ all if I’d been her. Leaving 


200 


The Tree of the Garden 

her and syke a home as you’ve gotten, to come an’ live with 
yoursen at Whinsett.” 

“Did you notice it, too? Yes, I’m afraid that’s the truth 
of it, Thursday. She tells me I’ve been at Whinsett close 
upon a month. I’d no idea. Time seems to fly when one is 
happy. She talks of going with me into Wales—but perhaps 
that won’t be for some time yet. That’s just to get me back 
again. I can tell she feels hurt to think of my staying on here 
without the least suggestion of returning home. To be quite 
frank, I was always avoiding that. I rather wish, now, I had 
gone back sooner.’’ 

“Aye,’’ said George Hardrip’s lass, in a dropped voice of 
contrition, “I know. Fault’s mine for keeping ye. You’d ’a 
been gone a fortnight but for me.’’ 

“No, no; I didn’t mean it in that way, Thursday,” he pro¬ 
tested. “Don’t think I regret these extra days with you. They 
are the most wonderful part of all my life. Until I met you 
I never thought such happiness could be. But if I had gone 
back before my mother wrote this letter, it might have made 
things easier.” 

“Is she vexed wi’ ye?” George Hardrip’s lass enquired, with¬ 
out emotion, as if almost she stood outside all range or influence 
of Mrs. Openshaw’s displeasure. 

“Not vexed,” Guy Openshaw replied. “She never is vexed, 
Thursday. She has never been angry with me in my life. But 
grieved; a little hurt. See . . . here is her letter. Read it.” 

“Aye, it’s plain to tell she’s not friends wi’ ye,” Thursday 
Hardrip said, when she had picked her way through Mrs. 
Openshaw’s epistle, with conscientious help from Guy. “She 
as good as tells ye you mun think more aboot Whinsett than 
your own mother. I can’t reckon it up any better than what 
she can. To stop i’ syke a place as this, when there’s servants 
to wait of ye at wum, and a carriage to drive about in. No 
wonder she feels it.” 

“ . . . I must go back,” Guy Openshaw decided. “You 
realise that now, don’t you, Thursday?” 


201 


The Tree of the Garden 

“Aye,” said Thursday, “you’d best go back.” 

“For both our sakes, I mean,” Guy Openshaw explained. 
“If I go back at once ... if I go back to-day, that ought to 
please her. Don’t you think so, Thursday?” 

“Aye, that ought to please her,” Thursday conceded. “What 
time shall ye gan ?” 

“There’s the tent to pack up first of all. I shall leave it at 
Suddaby’s, with all the things. Then, you see, that will be a 
good excuse for coming back again. For of course I shall want 
to come back to Whinsett to see you and tell you all the plans 
as soon as possible.” 

“Shall you?” said Thursday. She accepted all he said to her 
with the unquestioning docility of a child. It interested her 
deeply, like a child’s fairy tale; but it was untrue, of course— 
there was no truth, no substance, no reality in it. It stood to 
sense there w T asn’t. She was puzzled to decide how much Guy 
Openshaw believed himself. Aye! he must have his doubts, 
like her. Be sure he had. He knew his mother well enough 
by now to realise she wasn’t to be won by words. Words 
wouldn’t tice her. Not they.” 

“ . . . And then, when the tent’s all safely packed away,” 
she heard him telling her, “I shall try and get to Dimmlesea 
at once.” 

“Shall ye?” said George Hardrip’s lass again. “What train 
shall ye gan with?” 

It had been his first exuberant resolve to catch the two 
o’clock train to Hunmouth, so that he might reach Beaton- 
thorpe in time to surprise his mother at her afternoon tea. 
That would have been a wondrous filial accomplishment. It 
would have testified his love for her so superbly as to bring 
tears of gladness and gratitude to her eyes. “Guy! my darling 
boy! You here!” A few tears; a little weeping of maternal 
joy would have been invaluable to his purpose. But the girl’s 
dispassionate enquiry weakened resolution. She, too, had feel¬ 
ings to consider. He must not wound them. He knew with 
what intentness they hung upon him now. And the two o’clock 


202 


The Tree of the Gar deft 

train became, even as he spoke of it, the six o’clock train, which 
would enable him to reach Beatonthorpe in time for dinner. It 
was still a testament of filial affection, likely to bring abundant 
thankfulness to his mother’s heart. Yes! the six o’clock train 
was the train he had in mind. 

“Who’s tekkin ye ti station?” asked George Hardrip’s lass. 
“Suddabys’ ?” 

Why, to be sure, he had not thought of that! Yes. No 
doubt they would if he asked them. Or Blockley. He could 
send a wire to Dimmlesea from Plumpton. 

“Don’t ask them,” the girl besought him. “Let me drive ye 
ti Dimmlesea. It’ll be last time I s’ll get chance. I’se meant 
begging ye all while, but I dursn’t till now. Will ye?” 

The prospect of that long drive to Dimmlesea, side by side 
with her in George Hardrip’s cart, made him uneasy. Rather 
would he have taken his last leave of her here—in the cow¬ 
shed, the stable, behind the pig-stye wall. Anywhere remote 
from the eyes of men, where this farewell might be without 
constraint. And then again: a woman’s self-possession was not 
to be relied on. His mother never said good-bye to him but 
that she broke a little. Tears before onlookers at Dimmlesea— 
that he could neither reason with nor solace—would be a dread¬ 
ful thing. He had the masculine horror of tears. Too many 
of them had been spilled upon him in public places. 

“Maybe you’d liever gan wi’ Suddabys,” George Hardrip’s 
lass suggested. How quick was her perception. Barely the 
fraction of a second had been spent in thinking, yet she divined 
his latent hesitation as though his lips confessed it. “Suddabys’ 
is a better cart, I know. They’d drive ye quicker. Aye! don’t 
bother wi’ me. I don’t know what made me ask ye. It was 
nobbut fancy.” 

“But you have asked me,” Guy Openshaw protested, “and 
I’d much rather go with you—a thousand times rather go with 
you, Thursday. You know I would.” 

“Would you?” George Hardrip’s lass responded. “Are ye 
sure?” 

Yes! He was sure now. He was sure with the redoubled 


The Tree of the Garden 203 

sureness of all whilom doubters who make up for a moment’s 
weakness with a two-fold strength of resolution. 


8 

And so Guy Openshaw’s tent disappeared from its place 
beneath the buttery-bush in the six-acre, and went into the 
cloistered dimness of Suddaby’s big barn, along with the kaff- 
cutter and the root-chopper and the scythes and the straw and 
the prehistoric horn of axle-grease with the ragged goose-feather 
stuck in it, and hay rakes and teaming forks and chinks of 
blazing splendour, as if the barn were built of bricks of sun¬ 
light; and sparrows twittering roisterously in the rafters 
beneath the blood-red tiles. 

“By Go! . . . Noo we s’ll be strange and sorry ti lose ye, 
you may depend,” the farmer assured him, who had lent his 
personal enthusiasm to the tent’s disposal as if the world offered 
no more important task for him to-day. “By Go, Aye! We 
sail an’ all.” 

The sense of urgency produced by Guy Openshaw’s impend¬ 
ing departure stirred up all Suddaby’s enthusiasms. Whether 
a visitor came or went, the effect upon the farmer was invari¬ 
able. All the wonders of the farm must be displayed in one 
supreme and staggering review. At such a moment things of 
interest shouted to be shown and seen, Suddaby seemed rent 
to pieces with the contestant zeals of hospitality that pulled 
him. 

All over the old ground he led Guy Openshaw. Aye! right 
back from the earliest days when the garden was like a brick¬ 
field, and stacks got that little shelter while half on ’em would 
blow away of a night; and there wasn’t as many drainpots 
upon spot as would serve yon four-acre. 

. . . And then Guy Openshaw must shake hands with the 
Misses Suddaby—handshakes of solemnity and confusion, in 
which no end of deep far-reaching knowledge was betrayed. 
He knew! he divined in their lowered eyes, in their sidelong 


204 


The Tree of the Garden 

faces and limp and lifeless hands, that the star of his popularity 
lay low on the horizon; that a mist of prejudice obscured it; 
that his old prestige with the sisters had been lost. It troubled 
him, for in his heart he liked them both, and wished them well. 
But true it is man cannot serve two masters—much less two 
mistresses; and he did not fully realise (being yet so young) 
that this overt preference for George Hardrip’s lass had cast 
an undeserved slur upon them. They, the daughters of his 
mother’s tenant, to be treated with most studious politeness 
whilst he went out courting with Thursday Hardrip; lay 
under aud thorn-bush with her all during storm. So deeply 
had his conduct hurt and mortified them that they had 
mutually vowed he should not shake them by the hand in 
leaving Whinsett. They would watch it. 

But tortured by the fear that Mrs. Suddaby might accept 
their silence at its pre-avowed value, and let the visitor depart 
without an effort to discover them, merely expressing her polite 
perplexity as to what could ’a gotten lasses—the sisters came 
forth at last to feed their animosity on a final sight of Guy 
Openshaw’s smile. And despite their indignation against him 
they ran into the dairy when he took his leave, to watch him 
go and see the last of him. Dibner Suddaby was away hoeing 
turnips with Allison Marriot in the Fothom highlands. From 
time to time the two minute figures could be seen straightened 
momentarily against the sky-line; but for the most part they 
toiled with bowed shoulders; indistinguishable from the soil by 
any save Suddaby eyes. It was a relief to Guy Openshaw to 
be spared the ordeal of this further greeting. 

“Say good-bye to Dibner for me,” he charged the farmer’s 
wife. “Tell him I was sorry not to have a word with him 
before going.” 

Some day Dibner would understand. Some day they would 
all understand. Before very long. Shortly. When he came 
back to Whinsett. 


The Tree of the Garden 


205 


9 

And but a few minutes later he was on his homeward journey- 
in George Hardrip’s light cart, seated by Thursday Hardrip’s 
side, shogging down the indolent hot roadway, through herb¬ 
age smothered once again beneath a powdery vestiture of dust 
and pollen. The blacksmith waved an oily cap and forearm 
at him from the Plumpton smithy, and his wife came hurrying 
to the gate in a whirl of petticoats and maternal feelings, to 
snatch a glimpse of Master Openshaw and shake a handker¬ 
chief at him before the cart had dipped below the hill. But 
Guy Openshaw did not stop. Why, they would understand 
he was not quite his own master in George Hardrip’s trap. 
Besides, time pressed. But he would stop some day. Some day 
before very long. Shortly. The next time he came to Whin- 
sett. And then they would comprehend all, like Dibner. 

George Hardrip’s spring cart rocked along the roadway, 
a creeping point of lassitude in the fierce sun. A hot smell of 
horseflesh rolled backward against the sitters’ faces from the 
mare’s dank and shogging sides; above her patient head a 
nimbus of untiring flies darkened the air, dispersed from time 
to time by protective slashes from the girl’s whip, and thrown 
into violent commotion, but ever returning by force of 
centripetal elasticity to their primary shape, a nebulous and 
indestructible spheroid. Never had the country of his youthful 
dreams looked so lovely to Guy Openshaw as at this moment 
of leaving it. It softened with the beauty of some familiar 
dear face. From the telegraph wires torpid buntings reiterated 
their rusty phrases; tireless swallows skimmed the surface of 
the road, with the velocity of thought; blackbirds lulled them¬ 
selves to sleep with the drowsy sweetness of their own music; 
industrious yellow-hammers tinkled tiny notes on golden anvils; 
the cuckoo, its song already suffering change, stuttered with the 
over-protestation of a schoolboy asserting innocence. And 
withal, the sleeping silence of the sulphur-colored corn, brim¬ 
ming up to the level of the dusty hedgerows; the ripening 


206 


The Tree of the Garden 

grasses in the meadows; the soft blue sky spread overhead 
like a silken canopy. . . . Oh! often would he come back to 
command such glowing afternoons at will; live under the spell 
of Nature’s rhetoric with George Hardrip’s lass. Not a flower 
that grew along the roadside but seemed instinct with her 
similitude; not a crane’s bill or pink campion or umbel of white 
elder, or bank of golden bedstraw but breathed the name of 
Thursday Hardrip; spoke to him with the sweetness of her 
lips. Yes, this was their country, the native land of love. Be 
sure he must come back to it. Here they must ultimately 
dwell. A little farm, an old house in a fragrant garden filled 
all day with diapason of bees, set well-deep in the bosom of this 
green country away from the hot and dusty world—what could 
life offer more cherishable ? All the while they moved forward 
upon the road, he talked to Thursday Hardrip of such sustain¬ 
ing things, for it was plain to see this hour of his going tried 
her. She sat with fixed eyes and dumb profile, the reins gath¬ 
ered loosely in a passive hand; the hand that held them lying 
unregarded in her lap. “Aye,” she answered. “Nay.” En¬ 
thusiasms were hard to rouse in her. Now and again she smiled 
in response to his express solicitation, but the smile reflected 
only wanly the bright hopes displayed by him for her hearten¬ 
ing. “I shall write to you, Thursday,” he told her. “As soon 
as I have spoken with my mother. Not to-night, of course. 
You mustn’t look for any letter in the morning from me. The 
post will have left Beatonthorpe by the time I reach home. But 
perhaps to-morrow ... or the day after. At the very first 
opportunity.” 

“Aye,” she said. 

“And you must write to me, Thursday,” he urged her. 
“You understand, don’t you? You know you’ve promised.” 

Aye, she knew she’d promised. 

“Write and tell me everything, Thursday. All that con¬ 
cerns you interests me. Tell me how you get on after I am 
gone.” 

“Aye, if you want me to,” said the girl. Write? Why, 


207 


The Tree of the Garden 

she’d never written a letter in her life, to anybody. She 
scarcelins knew way to hold pen. She could milk all coos 
i’ time it mud tek her to write yan letter. But aye, if he 
wanted her to write, she would. Aye, if he wouldn’t be ashamed 
to get a letter addressed to him i’ syke plain writing as hers. 

Half way down the last declivity of road that leads to 
Dimmlesea station, she drew in the reins and brought the mare 
to a standstill. Why? Guy Openshaw asked her. Nay, she 
didn’t know. She couldn’t tell what made her. Maybe she’d 
thought he’d want to get down before they reached the station. 
Would he? It was another proof of the deficit of her faith 
in him. Always this morbid sense of their disparity hung like 
a curtain between them. Looks pierced it, words were audible 
through the folds of it, yet unless his own hand held the inter- 
ceptive stuff aside, it fell, a veil perpetual. 

“Surely you’re not going to leave me here, Thursday?” he 
said reproachfully. 

“Do ye mean: set ye doon i’ station?” 

“Of course. Whatever did you think!” 

She jerked the reins in silence, prodded the mare softly with 
the haft of George Hardrip’s whip; drove dubiously on. They 
dipped slowly to the station, beneath the azure wall of water 
that rose on their right—a vivid belt of indigo drawn flat across 
the sky like an anniversary sash. Already Abram Blockley’s 
dusty landaus were gathered in the station yard, attendant on 
the incoming train which, first reversing its engine on the turn¬ 
table, would take Guy Openshaw away. 


io 

A whole quarter of an hour was theirs, it seemed, in which 
to say good-bye. Guy Openshaw had hoped at heart it might 
be less, for all the best things had been said upon the road, and 
already his disquiet mind was half at home. His mother’s face 
assumed a gathering solemnity. 


208 


The Tree of the Garden 

But they looped the mare’s reins over the white palings, and 
George Hardrip’s lass and he walked out to the limit of the 
platform beneath the signal lamps and semaphores, and sat 
down upon a seat, the two of them, reading over and adding 
codicils to the exhaustive testament of love. The train steamed 
in at last, with its laboured Westinghouse breathing, throwing 
the station into a brief turmoil, and Guy Openshaw sought his 
carriage. 

Aye! It was as the girl suspected. He took his seat in a 
luxurious first-class carriage, without the least hesitation. A 
first-class carriage made suffocating hot with blue cushions and 
sunlight. A first-class carriage all to himself, with no one else 
contesting it. He bade her come inside (Thursday), and she 
went inside. She had never been in a first-class compartment 
before. Out of the fulness of her heart she said: “I wish 
I could be gannin wi’ ye!” Adding, “Not because o’ car¬ 
riage!”—through a swift fear of being misunderstood. Nay, 
the carriage was naught; it only reproached the unworthiness 
of her; convinced her of the futile folly of her dream. “But 
because o’ you.” That was the one sure unalterable thing. 
Her worship of him. 

“Some day you will come with me, Thursday,” he assured 
her; and the splendour of her aspiration relapsed at that into 
a dull “Aye.” The word seemed sighed rather than spoken. 
“Some day we shall always go together. Wherever I go, you 
will be with me, Thursday. Think of that, won’t you! Don’t 
forget it. Say it to yourself as you drive back.” 

Thereat, glancing first out of the carriage door, he took her 
in his arms. Nay, he could not resist that post-final kiss. His 
heart insisted on it for all his pious resolutions. Just to have 
the last soft pressure of her mouth upon his lips; to retain the 
physical memory of it, going home. Not tears, but a humid 
brightening of her eyes, responded. He had kissed her (her 
soul exclaimed) in a first-class carriage, all grand with blue 
upholstery and shining leather. What other girl i’ Whinsett 
had been kissed i’ syke a spot, by syke a one—that said he wished 


209 


The Tree of the Garden 

to wed her, whether he did indeed or didn’t? And stirred 
strangely by this final token of his kindness she found the 
courage all at once to whisper hotly in the mouth that kissed 
her: “Dean’t tell your mother when you get wum. Dean’t 
say naught tiv her. Promise me. It’ll only vex her. Think 
no more aboot wedding me. You mustn’t. I isn’t worth it. 
Keep what’s passed betwixt us secret, an’ come back ti Whinsett 
soon wi’oot telling anybody. Once you say aught tiv her, she’ll 
keep ye. I know she will.” 

She had not time to say more, for threatening carriage doors 
began to slam, and Guy Openshaw was constrained to put her 
quickly from him. But in that impulsive supplication the real 
abyss of the girl’s doubting had been revealed. Yes. It was 
high time he went home to see his mother; to take measures 
for stabilising the girl’s confidence on sure foundations. The 
defect of faith in her depressed him, but it augmented his love 
of her; confirmed his pride in the purity of her heart and 
motives. His mother had need to entertain no fear. George 
Hardrip’s lass stood nobly high above all base suspicions; a 
figure of pure gold. Little time remained him now for com¬ 
fort or expostulations. The guard’s shrill whistle pierced the 
air; stertorous puffs of steam responded from the engine, 
repulsing the blue sky; the platform slowly receded. 

“Good-bye, Thursday. Don’t forget. You’ll hear from 
me in a day or two. I shall come back to see you before 
long. ...” 

All the old stereotyped phrases of comfort and assurance 
dropped one after the other from his lips as the train moved. 
He stood at the open window, smiling back at her. Puff, puff, 
puff, went the urgent locomotive, indifferent to the tender stuff 
of hearts. Those were tears upon her lashes now. See, her 
eyes were big with them. Ah, the sight of tears on the coun¬ 
tenance of one beloved. What a pang, a sickness of inexpres¬ 
sible yearning they send through the bosom! All the sunlight 
of this lovely day seemed to gather round that diminished 
figure visioned on the platform; to wrap it in a luminous em- 


210 


The Tree of the Garden 

brace; to steal it from him with arms of heavenly gold. For 
a brief space, a brief unhappy while, Guy Openshaw was 
oppressed with the feeling that he turned his back upon love 
and life at the moment of their greatest splendour. The blaze 
of sunlit platform with the girl set like a jewel in its bright¬ 
ness, and the deep blue stain of sea beyond ... it seemed as 
if he flung these from him; suffered them to slip from a grasp 
insensible of their value. 

The station sank from sight, with all it held dear to him. 
Only the sunlight and the deep broad wash of indigo across 
the sky remained. Guy Openshaw withdrew his head and sat 
down on the burning cushions. To-night, yes, this very night, 
all the secret, doubting, surreptitious parts of love should be 
burned out of him in one splendid fire of confession. He would 
tell his mother all; make her his ally in love; raise George 
Hardrip’s lass out of the slough of doubt to the high place 
worthy of her, and of him. 


VII 


I 

G EORGE HARDRIP’S lass watched the red rectangle 
of the guard’s van shrink in her eyes to a tiny grain, 
a minute point, fiery as a carbuncle, at the end of an 
interminable perspective of gilded rails, beneath gigantic con¬ 
volutions of white steam that rolled in indolent billows over 
the green fields. Only when the quickening train was lost to 
sight, when all the interest it symbolised was drained to the 
last dreg out of the sunlit world, did she turn back to life’s 
emptiness. She loosened the reins from the station palings, 
took her seat in the dusty cart, called the mare to action, drove 
homeward with both hands in her lap; her inward eyes still 
fixed on the red van of a retreating train. Aye! that was the 
end of it. Write? Nay, he’d never write. Come back? Nay, 
he’d never come back. It was owered wi’ him. She knew it 
was. Something told her so. 

And yet, so great is the inconsistency of love—that doubts 
its own doubts, and can find no final resting-place even in 
despair—she was at the cowshed door next morning to watch 
the post go by; expectant of nothing, yet plucking timorously 
at the skirts of hope. After all . . . supposing he’d wrote to 
her! What would it feel like to have a letter or a picture 
postcard, all in his own writing, handed to her by postman; 
for postman to see, to read, to know about? So as postman 
could gan to Suddaby’s and say: 

“He’s wrote already. Thursday Hardrip’s had a line frev 
him ti-morn. I gi’ed it her at gate-end.” 

A letter to look and laugh at, and gan straight into cow- 
shade oot o’ road to read! Aye, and kiss! Kiss where his hand 


212 


The Tree of the Garden 

had been, and slip next her bare breast where she could feel it 
while she went about her work, as if it had been him. 

But the deputy-postman, pushing his lank legs along the 
roadway with the bearded hedge-stake, bore no letter for her. 
She saw at once he bore no letter for her. Letters for Sud- 
dabys’ he had. “Letters for Suddabys’!” she repeated, with a 
terrible suspicion at the heart. “Who from?” He showed 
them to her, little thinking, but her fear was unconfirmed. 

‘Tse jealous theer’s naught ni more,” the postman apolo¬ 
gised, making pretence to grope in the folds and by-ways of 
the bag. 

“Nay,” she said, “I know there isn’t. I didn’t expect there 
would be.” Who’d be like to write to her, indeed? Nobody. 
It didn’t stand to sense they would. 

Yet for all that she was there again next morning. Some¬ 
thing drew her. The certainty of disappointment drew her. 
She went out to meet inexorable disappointment as doomed 
men confront death. The sooner this moribund hope was dead, 
the better. It was in some sort, the act, a schooling in resig¬ 
nation. With each successive morning she felt herself more 
competent for the task—more assured, more reconciled. She 
thought so; she fancied so; she knew for certain it was not so. 
At the end of a week, a fortnight, he had not written. No 
word had come from him. 

After that she dared no longer face the postman. She feared 
his eyes. Not that he suspected. That was the terrible part 
about it. He suspected nothing. He seemed ignorant of what 
had been. Her one-time friendship with Mrs. Openshaw’s son 
left no more trace upon his mind than if it had been chalk- 
marks sponged from a blackboard. He never taxed her with 
attendance on a letter; never said he was jealous she’d be feel¬ 
ing lonely now somebody’d gone fro’ Whinsett; never sought 
to win her favour by hints and sly allusions that she could make 
believe to take offence at and hug to her heart for solace when 
he was gone. Over the past his silence lay with the depth and 
immobility of water. Aye, it even frightened herself—the stir- 


213 


The Tree of the Garden 

less depth of it—as if drowned things were down below; the 
past, for instance; the joys, the hopes that once had been; a 
hundred blurred corpses ready to turn their drowned eyes up¬ 
ward and float sightless to the surface at the first disturbance 
of the liquid coverlet that hid them. His lack of reference to 
those recent days seemed like a silent commentary on the folly 
of her hopes. Nay, if postman expected no letter for her, she 
needn’t look for any. He understood the likelihood o’ letters 
better than what she did. He knew w r ell enough there’d be no 
letter; knew well enough Guy Openshaw would never come 
back to her. Thing wasn’t worth trouble o’ talking about. 
Already postman had begun to ask her what she did wi’ hersen 
i’ afternoons, and whether she meant ti gan ti Hunmouth Fair 
ti-year (He should be there!) and was she like to be at 
Beachington ? 

When he got started to smile at her an’ look at her wi’ eyes 
as if there was something betwixt them already, or would be 
before long—nobbut she’d gi’e him chance—she couldn’t bide 
it. She cried: “This isn’t getting on wi’ work, howivver!” 
and ran back to the cottage with smarting eyes and a lump in 
her throat. Postman would never a’ dared to try and mek love 
tiv her if he thought Guy Openshaw meant to write or come 
back. He knew very well Mrs. Openshaw’s son would never 
come back. That’s why he did it. He thought: “He’s gone; 
it’s owered wi’ him. Noo mebbe she’ll tek on wi’ me.” But 
he was wrong. She’d never tek on wi’ him, nor anybody, after 
the one she’d had. Whether he came back or he didn’t come 
back, that page of her life was sacred. She’d let neabody 
scrawl and scribble on what he’d written in her heart with 
gold. Least of all Dibner. Nay, if she was forced to choose 
betwixt the two on ’em, it should be postman. Postman had 
never shouted after her when she was a lass, nor been ashamed 
to walk wi’ her, as Dibner had. Postman had nobbut come to 
Whinsett these last few weeks. She could bide postman better 
than Dibner; but she could bide neither of ’em after him. 
They spoke same as she did hersen; their words was nobbut 


214 


The Tree of the Garden 

coarse, rank stuff—seggrums and goose-grass and brassocks and 
coo-parsnip. She couldn’t seem to bide sound on it. When 
postman had gone by at day’s end, propelling his long legs along 
the road to Piumpton, it was Dibner Suddaby whose shade 
began to haunt the laneway. Coming or going, always his eyes 
were fixed upon the farm. She watched him from the bed¬ 
room, from the cowshade, from the pig-stye, from behind the 
w T ater-tub. Sometimes he would seat himself on Langton’s 
gate, down lane, not twenty yards away, whistling no tune at 
all with his hands plunged in his pockets. Once upon a time 
such attentions might have flattered hope; they would have 
sent her to her glass to try and find the elusive qualities of her 
attractiveness, saying: “Aye, mebbe, I’se good enough for syke 
as Dibner Suddaby and wagoner at Langton’s. But would 
somebody else think so? Would he be like to think same as 
them ?” 

Such self-examination had been, at worst, a delicious uncer¬ 
tainty, a toying with the vanities of hope, that titillated like 
cobwebs or fine lace. But now the overt admiration of Dibner 
Suddaby and of the Whinsett postman, and of all others that 
looked at her with longing and desire, brought only apprehen¬ 
sion and dismay. When she peered at Dibner Suddaby through 
the curtains of her bedroom window, or from the cowshed 
watched the postman trudging by, it was as if she watched 
the creepings of an encroachful tide that stretched forth its 
long, thin, crescent arms to compass her and cut her off, and 
she could do naught to save herself—but only stare and stare; 
impotent and fascinated by the sight of peril; crying, deep 
down in her heart: “Nobbut he’d write! Nobbut he’d come! 
Nobbut he’d do summut to show ’em!” These looks, overt 
and covert; these dawdlings in the lane; these diligent indif¬ 
ferences to her disregard, were like the noiseless lappings of 
the sea—smoothing the sands of time; washing out what once 
had been; obliterating the precious footsteps where happi¬ 
ness had trod. Aye! Sunfleet Anniversary, Piumpton Kissing- 
ring, Dimmlesea Gardens—all the reality of the district life 


215 


The Tree of the Garden 

began to press upon her, forcing her from the narrow place of 
insecurity on which she trembled. What was she, single-handed, 
against the forces that assailed her, that sought to pluck and 
pull her down from the quaking foothold of a dream? Ulti¬ 
mately they must prevail. Nature was stronger than her sex. 
Some day, her leaden eyes of fatalism realised, the sex must 
yield. It stood to sense it would. She was a lass, after all, 
destined like other lasses to give way nobbut folk pressed her 
long enough and hard enough, when heart within her was dead. 
That’s how it mostlins was; how it would be. Let Dibner 
Suddaby, or postman, or any other, have her, for peace and 
quietness’ sake; gan wi’ ’em as quiet as a coo ti market; milk, 
bake, sew, slave, bear children for ’em i’ way lasses syke as her 
was meant ti do. What better could she look for or expect. 

2 

Aye! The dream was over, sure enough. Do what she 
could, she could not coax her eyes to close again; could not 
counterfeit slumber convincingly enough to give her back the 
solace of this broken dream. Expelled from sleep she faced 
the world at last through the warped window-pane of trouble, 
filled with shame after the inebriety of her recent happiness. 
Nobody should ever see she’d been drunk wi’ love; blind drunk 
wi’ fondness and fancies. If once folk suspected she was pining 
for Mrs. Openshaw’s son, there’d be all Whinsett and Plump- 
ton laughing at her. Nay; she wasn’t fond enough for that. 
Mrs. Openshaw’s son? What was Mrs. Openshaw’s son to 
her? Mrs. Openshaw’s son was naught to her; she was naught 
to him. She never gi’ed him a thought. Oh! she had her 
answer forged and ready for all folks’ asking. Not that they 
were ever like to ask her. Only her grandfather divined the 
secret sore and touched it roughly—but who took notice of 
him? Folk would take more notice, any day, of her—and 
that was very little. So long as Mrs. Openshaw’s son re¬ 
mained at Whinsett, frequenting George Hardrip’s farm, the 


2 l6 


The Tree of the Garden 

old man had kept for the greater part a sour silence respecting 
him. Why ... as for keeping silence, he dared not say over 
much. She knew how it was with him. He stood in fear of 
Mrs. Openshaw’s son. He was afraid of him. Aye! and afraid 
of her an’ all, not knowing how much might be betwixt them; 
what sort of explosion his chance words might provoke. But 
now that she was alone, now that there was no gentleman at 
Whinsett to come and sit i’ cowshade with her of a morning, 
his tongue began to wag, to clatter back-reckonings, to fling 
things at her he had not dared to say before. At times the 
aching loneliness of life oppressed her so heavily that she had 
dreadful promptings to flee from it. Aye, to go away as he had 
gone. Nowhere in particular. Anywhere. Anywhere away 
from Whinsett, away from George Hardrip and Dibner Sud- 
daby and postman, and folk she knew. But what if she was 
to go away and next day he should come back for her; come 
back seeking her his-self, or wrote to her one morning as he’d 
promised—and aud man tore up letter for badness, as he was 
like enough to do! Nay! she mustn’t gan. She must bide 
where she was and put up wi’ what aud man said tiv her. It 
was naught to put up wi’, after all. Words broke nobody’s 
bones. She needn’t listen tiv ’em. 

They reaped the ripened grass in lane and meadow; it fell 
like stricken hopes before the silent scythe and chirruping 
blades; a great sad scent suspired from it like a dying sigh, 
filling the air with mortuary sweetness; causing all the 
countryside to stink sickly and mournful like a death-chamber. 
Day by day she toiled with George Hardrip in the hayfield, 
turning swaths, and helping him to rear the stack upon its tiny 
steddle in the nettle-grown garth beside the cowshed, where 
the western breeze wafted the feverish sweet breath of dying 
grass to her bedroom window each night, to mingle with her 
dreams. Her very thoughts at last acquired the reek of hay. 
In the cornfields great tracts of brimstone seared the green; the 
juicy stalks turned brittle; the scaley ears chattered drily in 
the breeze. Harvest drew on apace, and brought no letter still. 


217 


The Tree of the Garden 

Why! she looked for none. She’d gotten ower that. She could 
watch postman tramp his way to Whinsett and gan straight 
back to her work after he’d gone by wi’oot feeling it. All pain 
had died out of her trouble. She could bide to think about 
things now, as sick folk did when they begun to mend. At 
worst she was not worse off than she had been before he came 
to Whinsett. And even when disappointment was hardest to 
bear she’d never blamed him. Fault was hers—not his; she 
saw and owned a certain justice in her punishment. It was her 
that had sought him—he’d never sought her. She’d known 
all while what it would lead to, but lacked courage to tell him. 
She dursn’t speak truth for fear o’ vexing him; o’ losing him. 
His mother had brought him up too tender. Not like hers. He 
didn’t know the meaning o’ things as plain as what she did. 

. . . Well, it was owered. Time crept on. July now, and 
August as good as here. Haystacks showed everywhere above 
hedgerows. She saw the progress of the season beneath no 
glamour lent by any luminary of hope; only as a realisation 
of dull fact, like the unrolling of a clothes-line, or the disposal of 
damp wash-things on a hedge. Threshing machines would 
follow quick; traction engines staggering up road beneath a 
canopy of black smoke, their funnels shaking like the hat on 
palsied men, and throbbing unbearably at one farm or other 
from morn till nightfall. After that, Martinmas and the 
Standings. Mayhap she’d stop while Martinmas. Then very 
like she’d gan. She’d let him know to look for someone else, 
and gan oot ti service same as rest. She’d never settle i’ Whin¬ 
sett any more. She fair hated sight o’ place; it was for ever 
taunting her with what had been. It wouldn’t let her forget. 
Cowshade, stable, dairy, pig-stye, lane he’d used to walk down, 
gate he’d stood at. Aye! all of them for ever mocked her with 
the memory of that radiant epoch when Mrs. Openshaw’s son 
had played sweetheart to her, had caused her heart to tremble 
at the sight or sound of him. She’d heard tell o’ lasses that 
died for love, but never believed it while now. Now she be¬ 
lieved it. She only wished she could dp same as them. Aye, 


2l8 


The Tree of the Garden 

if only she could fall asleep over the thought of him and all 
the happiness he’d meant to her; die with her mind fixed fast 
on that; clasping both arms round it so that, some road or 
other, she didn’t know how, it mud be lapped up wi’ her i’ 
coffin—why, she was ready to gan any time. Life wasn’t just 
living—it was hoping. When folk hadn’t aught to hope, they 
hadn’t aught ti live for. Milking coos—that wasn’t a thing 
to live for. Churning butter, making cruds, feeding pigs and 
poultry, gathering eggs, dressing chickens for market—what 
was there to live for i’ syke things as them, day after day, week 
after week, year after year? Life was same as a heavy road— 
it wasn’t made any lighter for being longer. 


3 

And then, at last, all at once, one afternoon—it happened. 
Postman had gone by on his way back to Plumpton, staring 
at cottage as if he’d never seen it before; as if it was a thing 
of strangeness sprung up sin’ he went past i’ morning. She 
watched him oot o’ window, hid behind curtain; listened to 
the sound of his loose footsteps that scraped up the roadway 
dust like scruffles, to the sound of the hedge-stake smitten on 
grund. Aye, he walked his loudest whenever he passed George 
Hardrip’s gate. Sometimes he sung or whistled. But it was 
all same, noo. She never showed herself. Not till footsteps 
had died away and she could be sure his stature was shrunk 
to the insignificance of a forking-robin over the remote twig of 
roadway did she quit her hiding place and gaze mutely after 
him from the gate. Sun was moving same way an’ all. Sun 
and postman set off fro’ Whinsett aboot same time i’ afternoon, 
keeping company westwards towards that heart-sickening quar¬ 
ter of heaven where hazy Hunmouth lay; where legendary 
Beatonthorpe was, whose mere thought clogged the bosom like 
an unfetched sob. Postman meant naught to her, but he sym¬ 
bolised the life that scintillated over yonder, through the 
golden sundust thickening and deepening in the west. He 


219 


The Tree of the Garden 

stood for Hunmouth and the unattainable happiness of human 
sympathy; he was the solitary tie betwixt the bright and heed¬ 
less world and her own solitude. She followed his footsteps 
in her fancy. Imagination traced the transit of the train. On 
lownd evenings her keen ears could even register the deep 
expulsions of its parting breath against the clear Peterwick 
sky. Her own breath stopped at the sound of it; she listened 
in a suffocating tension to the quickening impulses till all she 
heard at last was her own heart-throbs pulsing against the 
background of sky-silence, and she fetched back her dazed 
faculties to meaningless immediate things—to the empty world 
her soulless body dwelt in. 

. . . Postman was gone. For awhile his passing figure 
stabbed out minute and sharp like a thorn-prick above the last 
rise of ground, then it contracted rapidly—disappeared. Aye, 
some day before long she’d take same road. Some day she’d 
gan as postman did; turn her back on Whinsett for good an’ 
all, and see if she couldn’t leave this dull dead self of hers 
behind. 

Still staring westward across the sharpened palisading of the 
gate, she was so wrapped in the intensity of gaze and thought 
that the sound of a footfall at close quarters took her by sur¬ 
prise. It was no native footfall, she heard at once; it spoke 
not the language of Dibner Suddaby’s blunt cobbles, nor rasped 
the roadway like her grandfather’s grudging soles, but touched 
the ground with the niceness of fine shoe leather, leisurely and 
self-possessed. For one instant a wild thought leaped up into 
her mind with the staggering uncertainty of a sleeper too rudely 
roused, dazed betwixt hope and fear. Quickly she turned her 
head. Nay! it wasn’t what she’d thought; what her heart 
had balked at. It was a stranger—a gentleman an’ all. But 
this one mud ’a dropped straight fro’ Hunmouth, fro’ Beaton- 
thorpe; from the same fine world that somebody else belonged 
to. She found his eyes fixed curiously upon her, and taken at 
this disadvantage she dropped her own, with a conscious deep¬ 
ening of colour. He was too gain-hand for her to turn away 


220 


The Tree of the Garden 

without rudeness; she could only lower her lashes over the 
quickest hedge, feigning clumsy interest in its leaves, plucking 
them with fingers awkward and constrained. Mayhap (she 
thought) if she didn’t look at him a second time he’d gan by. 
Mayhap he wouldn’t speak to her. Why should he speak to 
her? What should he have to say to her if he did speak? 
There! he’d stopped. He’d spoken to her. For some reason 
or other her heart was beating so violently that she could scarce 
control her ears. Could she tell him, please, if this place was 
Whinsett? Aye, it was. Could she tell him the whereabouts 
of Hardrip’s farm? She told him huskily: “This is it.” 
Apprehensions clamoured about her now like bairns that tug 
and pull a mother’s skirts when some stranger speaks with her. 

“Are you by any chance Thursday Hardrip?” he asked. 

She was sensible of a sudden tremblement in all her mem¬ 
bers at the question, as if her flesh were fit to melt. For her 
quickened intuitions told her that this visit had but one com¬ 
plexion. She stood cowering at bay against the last vestige of 
hope; the last crumbling buttress of illusion. And her cow¬ 
ardice almost cried: “Nay! dean’t say naught ni more! Dean’t 
tell me. I’d liever not be telt. Tek your ways back and let 
me gan on as I is doing. I can bide it easier. I dean’t want 
to know naught!” Instead, she answered in a dull and listless 
voice: “Aye, I’se her.” 


VIII 


I 

A I ^ HANK God, the worst was over. Her son had looked 
at her at last. Hour after hour she had kept vigil, 
rewarded by no ripple on the surface of intelligence; 
knowing not where the soul of her son resided, nor in what 
unfathomable depths it strove; whether, indeed, it strove at 
all, or through exhaustion suffered itself to become one with 
the immobility that horrified her. But he had looked at her 
at last; his lips had moved. No sound crept through them, 
but her solicitude divined they shaped the word “Mother”— 
and after a moment he found strength to smile at her. That 
manifestation of love creeping like tired sunlight through the 
veil of infinite weakness stirred such compassionate emotions 
in her as she had not felt since his first cry reached her, and 
they laid against her breast the thing of divine feebleness that 
was her son. 

And they would have robbed her of this priceless moment 
had she but hearkened to them. The doctor, Mrs. Lattimer, 
all her friends—conspiring to urge that nursing was no mother’s 
work—that it lay beyond her strength and should be committed 
to another. 

“A nurse!” her outraged feelings cried, rising cap-a-pie to 
resist this dispossession of motherhood. She had nursed her 
dear husband in his last illness. Was she now not competent 
to nurse her son? “Is a strange woman more trustworthy than 
his mother? Does she understand my son better than I under¬ 
stand him? I will not hear of it. If only I had been beside 
him . . . this dreadful thing would never have happened.” 

Her soul’s bitterness would not be denied the consolation of 


221 



222 


The Tree of the Garden 

this last sharp stab, for she spoke the words to Mrs. Lattimer 
in the first revulsion of her feelings; strove to vindicate a 
whole lifetime of misappreciated motherhood. From the day 
of Guy’s birth Mrs. Lattimer had called that motherhood in 
question (Oh! she was aware of it!) ; had been an inveterate 
doubter of Mrs. Openshaw’s ability to direct her son. And 
now, Mrs. Lattimer’s own daughter was the instrument that 
brought this dreadful thing to pass. Would Mrs. Openshaw 
ever forget the horror of that homecoming! The violent ring¬ 
ing at the bell; the sudden spectacle of Mrs. Lattimer, too 
agitated to await admission, with a countenance distracted 
between tears and idiotic laughter; her two hands ringing 
dumb peals in the air, imploring her astounded auditor to be 
calm. 

“Compose yourself, Mrs. Openshaw. Oh, my dear Mrs. 
Openshaw! Compose yourself! They’re coming. The cab 
will be here directly. Charlotte nipped on in advance to tell 
me. She daren’t face you herself. The horse is no worse, but 
the shafts are broken. Those dreadful traction engines! They 
oughtn’t to allow such things. They oughtn’t really. And 
Guy . . . ” 

Until this mention of her son’s name, Mrs. Openshaw had 
listened to all her friend’s hortation with a face of sheer be¬ 
wilderment, wrapped up in folds of calamity too opaque for 
her understanding. But at the mention of Guy her heart 
kindled to solicitude at once. 

“Guy! Whatever do you mean? Guy is at Whinsett!”— 
for there indeed at this moment an injured maternity believed 
him to be. “Isn’t he? Speak! Have you heard anything? 
Have they written . . . telegraphed? Tell me at once. I 
insist!” 

Mrs. Lattimer’s repetitious lips strove to divulge the thing 
that burdened them, “ . . . Prepare yourself, dear Mrs. Open¬ 
shaw! Be brave. Guy has come home. Charlotte met him 
quite by chance at the station. They were both on the same 
train without knowing it. Naturally ... as she was driving, 


The Tree of the Garden 223 

she offered to bring him home in the dogcart. Good gracious! 
They might both have been killed. Charlotte’s bruised and 
shaken . . . What’s that? Is it cab wheels? Don’t go, don’t 
go! Dear Mrs. Openshaw, let me beg of you! Compose 
yourself first. Sit down and let me prepare you properly. Let 
them bring him in and take him to his room. Let them 

wash him first . . . The doctor’s been sent for ...” Her 

helpless hands beat vain air and her words fell on wind. 

“Whatever is the use!” she continued, in a less strepitous voice 
for her own sustainment. “Has she gone? She has! The 
obstinate, senseless creature. She will only scream or do some¬ 
thing dreadful. I wish I had never come. Charlotte oughtn’t 
to have asked me. I declare I’m trembling all over.” 

But the cry that Mrs. Lattimer awaited with precautionary 
fingers raised to both her ears, ready to stop the sound the 
moment her curiosity had the satisfaction of it, never came. 
“What is the woman made of!” she exclaimed, almost 
petulantly to herself, by way of compensation for defrauded 
expectancy. “Has she no feelings? She’s always talking about 
them—why doesn’t she show them? If it had been my son, 
I should have wanted to do something, at least. I couldn’t 
have borne to go and look at him in that condition. I 
couldn’t even bear to stay by my husband when he had his 
heart attacks. I felt them more than he did.” 

But Mrs. Openshaw uttered no sound beyond the exclama¬ 
tion: “My boy! my boy!”—that tore her heart rather than 
her lips, like the rending of fine linen, as she stooped with 
wrung mouth to kiss the drawn features of her son. In the 
vanity of lamentations she wasted no moment. Her directions, 
conveyed in a blanched voice divested of everything save 
authority, had the force of deific commands. Her composure 
was terrible; it turned all within the reach of it to mere instru¬ 
ments of her will. The whole universe resolved itself (for 
her) into two prime imperatives: her son’s needs and her own 
duty. She it was who sponged the blood and soil from his 
ragged temple; who cut the sleeve from his broken arm, work- 


224 


The Tree of the Garden 

ing with the silent, almost feral, concentration of a beast of 
prey until the doctor came. Not till these dread preliminaries 
were done, and her son lay swathed upon his bed, and the 
doctor—surprised by this unsuspected fortitude in Mrs. Open- 
shaw—consoled her: “You have done everything possible— 
everything that could be done ...” did self-possession for¬ 
sake her, and she shook with dislocative tears. Then, and not 
till then, did her troubled, reawakened self remember Mrs. 
Lattimer. But her friend was gone. Weary of listening at 
door crevices and stairfoot to the tense silence that alone be¬ 
trayed the urgency of happenings overhead; of interrogating 
white-faced servants who floated to and fro in dazed commo¬ 
tion like moths in disturbed sunlight: “How is he? . . . Has 
he spoken? . . . Has he opened his eyes? ...” the tightened 
atmosphere in this house of calamity proved too much for her. 
“Tell Mrs. Openshaw I will not stay longer. If I could be 
of the least use . . . But I fear I am only in the way. There 
is nothing she would let me do.” To herself, for her own 
justification, she exclaimed: “Good gracious! all the time 
I am staying here I am forgetting my own daughter. Never 
a word about Charlotte! Not so much as ‘How is she?’ She 
might not count.” It gratified her to some degree to find in 
Mrs. Openshaw’s utter selfishness a set-off against the respon¬ 
sibility for the dire event that she recognised as lying at her 
door. “Of course Charlotte will be blamed for this. I shall 
be blamed. Barnard will be blamed—he ought never to have 
had a dogcart. As if anybody’s to blame! It’s dreadful for 
everybody concerned.” She went away sensible of a burden of 
deep disgrace, seeking to elaborate a counter-claim out of the 
unreasonableness of Mrs. Openshaw’s nature. “If only she’d 
just come down to tell me how he looked. But to leave me 
without a word! Even the servants shirked me; I suppose 
she’s told them. I declare I wish I hadn’t called. Charlotte 
ought never to have sent me. If an} r thing happens to him we 
shall never hear the end of it.” 


The Tree of the Garden 


225 


2 

Through the delirious night of sickness, wandering far 
beyond the succour of his mother’s love, awful things had hap¬ 
pened to Guy Openshaw. Monstrous mouths opened in the 
inky void like sepulchres, and dreadful cries came out of them. 
Ruthless fists had felled him to the earth. Crazy vehicles had 
rumbled over him, urged on by huge voices of revilement. He 
had discharged gigantic firearms whose explosions shook the 
universe, slaying creatures dear to him, and whose recoils hurled 
him headlong into the sickness of space. Lightnings, thunders, 
and tempestuous rains beset his way. Ages long he lay in 
bondage, beneath primeval bushes, and wild beasts licked his 
face with tongues of fire. Bereft of all identity or attachment 
in time or space he strove against the powers of darkness; a 
tormented spirit seeking reunion with dissevered matter; ally¬ 
ing itself in turn with sounds and sights, with beasts and birds, 
with aches and pains and things reputedly insentient; such 
things as cartwheels, churns, and throbbing stithies, clangorous 
hammers and fierce forge fires. Many times he died and was 
buried, and rose again from the momentary respite of defunc¬ 
tion into the torments of renewed life—as though death’s self 
could not suffice to quench and slay this raging spark of con¬ 
sciousness. Until at last, after aeons of blind wandering, he 
won his way back to the flesh once more; sank into the familiar 
substance of his body; looked out afresh from its long-sealed 
eyes upon his mother. 

He was getting better. Danger had been outstripped by 
love and care and skill and the resilience of youth. Strips of 
sticking plaster replaced the stitches in his seared temple. He 
was young; eventually (the doctor said) the wound might 
leave no scar. Already it throbbed no longer, or scarce at all. 
Only that impotent right arm, strapped to its splint, ached 
curiously like a thing apart on the coverlet beside him. His 
cheeks were pale; his pinched lips bloodless; the slender fingers 
of his left hand showed the transparency of wax. But what 


226 


The Tree of the Garden 

were such arbitrary signs as these? He was getting better. 
Propped on his comfortable pillow he could bear at last the 
golden light that glorified his casements, flushing the open win¬ 
dows with bright hues borrowed from vivid garden-blooms, 
and mellow green reflections from leafage and lawn. His wan 
eyes, sharpened with renascent thirst for life, clung to the vital 
source of splendour not less intently than childhood’s lips and 
hands cling to the precious cup it drinks from. His ears drained 
the sounds of summer, honey-sweet, as bees suck nectaries; his 
nostrils found delight in warm scents borne to him by lullful 
airs that swayed the sunlit curtains and bent over his bed with 
the stooping tenderness of women. 

. . . How sweet it was. How sweet it might have been, 
thus to lie at leisure, tasting the freshness of life reborn; feed¬ 
ing on the ineffable fare offered for his sustainment; fine 
ambrosial wafers that melted like music between the lips and 
filled all his soul with strains of gratitude and joy. Instead, 
importunate remembrance tugged at him, giving his roused 
consciousness no respite. Those secret obligations unfulfilled 
mocked the peace within his mother’s house. 

Ten days already he had been gone from Whinsett. Ten 
days of questioning despair for Thursday Hardrip, of hopeless 
waiting on his word. And here he lay, bound to this inalien¬ 
able bed. It all but made him groan, the dreadful realisation 
of his impotence. Between himself and Thursday Hardrip 
the fateful figure of his mother intervened. A figure of ten¬ 
derness and love, soft as the sunlight that lay upon his pillow; 
a shadow, a wall, a rampart. 

Now why, in heaven's name, could he not confess to her; 
take profit by his weakness and tell her all? His stricken arm, 
the wound upon his forehead, the hollow brightness of his 
eyes, the pinch of recent suffering on his lips, the pallor of 
his hands and cheeks—surely here were advocates enough to 
plead his cause; to melt a mother’s heart. Nay, that he knew. 
That, to his infinite distress, he knew. The knowledge of it 
hushed and awed him. But he stood her debtor for so much 


227 


The Tree of the Garden 

that now, to wound her by one single word or act seemed 
infamy. For sickness had purged his mind of all illusions; the 
lenses of his inward sight were cleansed. This thing withheld 
so troublously from his mother’s knowledge was no mere paltry 
secret to be puffed into nothing by a breath. It was a blow. 
Deal it howsoever gently—it was a blow. She would reel 
under it incredulously, saying to herself: “My son has struck 
me! 

And then, too, he was very weak as yet. Strangely, won¬ 
derfully weak. His thoughts swayed like sea-ferns in deep, 
dim currents of emotion. Strange pities stirred and filled him. 
So clear were his perceptions, so susceptible his senses to the 
innate loveliness of all things, that a word, a beam of sunlight, 
the softness of a footstep, the turn of a head, subdued him to 
awe, to wonder, to reverence. Only the will lacked. He was 
not strong enough, as yet, for that; not hard enough: In his 
rebirth he lay too young and tender. From each fresh struggle 
after this unattainable will he relapsed upon his oceanic bed; 
closed his eyes; surrendered. Yes! It was beyond him now. 
But shortly . . . after a while ... in a day or two . . . 


3 

In the first despairing bitterness of heart, Mrs. Openshaw 
had cried: “I never wish to look on Charlotte Lattimer again. 
I could not bear the sight of her.” 

But when her son’s life dipped in the balance, and one knew 
not quite on which side of eternity the beam would sink, her 
bitterness broke down. Was this a time to foster hatreds whilst 
her son lay betwixt life and death, and she had so much to ask 
of God? 

So when Mrs. Lattimer called to beg the favour of a moment 
with her: “Dear Mrs. Openshaw. Can you bear . . . Wont 
you say a word to Charlotte? Just one word. I couldn’t 
prevail on her to come in. She is quite terrified to face you. 
She says you will never want to see her again. She’s sure of 


228 


The Tree of the Garden 

it. But that’s ridiculous. Of course you will. Do please see 
her, Mrs. Openshaw, and try and set her mind at rest . . . ” 

When Mrs. Lattimer spoke thus, with agitation manifest in 
hands and hat, what could Guy’s mother do? She could only 
melt into a flush of instantaneous remorse. 

“Angry with her? I? My dear Mrs. Lattimer. God 
forbid I should be angry with anybody. Anger is for Him— 
not us!” 

“Why! that’s just what I’ve been telling her myself,” the 
unpercipient Mrs. Lattimer rejoined, in the flood of her relief. 
“How could you be angry? You’ve no idea how dreadful it 
has been for me. Charlotte! Come, child. ...” 

She came in with every sign of trouble and confusion, scarce 
venturing to lift her eyes to the visage of grief in front of her ; 
words of incoherent sorrow trembling on her lips. “ . . . Oh, 
Mrs. Openshaw! You don’t know how sorry I am ... I 
shall never forgive myself! ... I’d rather it had happened 
to me ... to anybody but Guy. Do you think? . . . Does 
the doctor say? ... Is he going to? . . . How is he?” 

And withal, accompanying these broken queries, tears. Tears 
gleaming on her lashes; tears of obvious contrition and con¬ 
cern, very gratifying to a mother’s heart. True, this girl was 
answerable for her son’s mishap. But at least she wept for 
him. For the first time in her history Mrs. Openshaw took 
Charlotte Lattimer into the impulsive yearning of her arms, 
and kissed her. A whole lifetime of prejudices trembled on 
the verge of liquefaction. Tears had translated Charlotte Lat¬ 
timer to her in a new and unexpected light. The girl was not 
wholly superficial. Deeper qualities resided in her. And after 
the first bitterness of anger, how sweet was immersion in these 
clear reconciling waters—pools of blessed healing for chafed 
hearts to lave in. 


4 

Coincidence it might be, but from that same hour Guy Open¬ 
shaw began to mend, drawing up to life’s surface out of the 


229 


The Tree of the Garden 

depths of the leaden sea whose waters had lain over him so 
long, unbroken. Not that Mrs. Openshaw ever divulged the 
secret to any but her Maker. There are things that not the 
lowliest pride can shape its lips to say. But her soul strove 
hard to maintain meekness and gratitude before her friends; 
to divest itself of all unworthy jealousies; of all breast-armour 
of suspicion. Her eyes moistened at the great bunches of fra¬ 
grant flowers brought daily by Charlotte Lattimer’s own hand 
for the beautifying of Guy’s room. There were flowers as 
fine, and finer, in his mother’s garden, to be sure; but her 
magnanimity would not stoop to make comparisons between 
them. Nay, on the contrary, she gave to Charlotte’s blooms 
the daily place of honour nearest to his bed and eye; drew his 
attention to them with a commendatory hand that held up the 
blossoms for his appreciation as if they had been children’s 
faces. “See what Charlotte Lattimer has brought you, Guy! 
How beautiful! How beautiful!!” All the fragrance of her 
son’s recovery seemed to be embalmed in the breath that rose 
from their curled lips and filled his room with sweetness. 

Nor did her magnanimity stop here. She suffered no mater¬ 
nal jealousy to bar his door to visitors one moment longer than 
the need was. Mrs. Lattimer and her daughter were the first 
to see him. She might have kept them from his bedside another 
week without reproach, and none the wiser. But she scorned 
to do it, although the hour was not without its twinges for a 
mother’s heart. 

Day by day Charlotte Lattimer called, always with some 
offering for the sick room whose fragrant beauty softened 
Mrs. Openshaw’s sentiment, made her heart bend towards the 
bearer of such tributes to her son. Each afternoon the girl sat 
beside his bed, content to talk with him or hold him silent com¬ 
pany if he closed his eyes. Her conduct in the sick room showed 
exemplary. There was no senseless effusion; no ostentatious 
stooping over his bed; no tiresome readjustments of his pil¬ 
low —^ if he lacked a mother to look after him. Her conduct, 
in a word, stood every test of the maternal eye. She came, 


230 


The Tree of the Garden 

Mrs. Openshaw was sure, out of no other motive than desire 
to prove he* deep concern for what had happened; to take her 
fitting share in shouldering the burden; to do what lay within 
her power to lighten the patient’s moments, and through 
devoted service seek atonement. 


5 

One afternoon she left them thus together, without fear or 
question. Her son smiled up into her face, taking the kiss she 
never failed—in going—to lay upon his forehead. Naught 
but love unclouded, frank and free, shone in the look. The 
daughter of her friend sat in her wonted place by the table 
charged with flowers and the books Guy Openshaw so loved 
to see. Who, of any sitter of her sex and years, could have 
desired a posture more comformable and seemly? 

Outside, the July sunlight fell hot upon the half-drawn sun- 
blinds; dripped golden splashes on to the curtains of the two 
tall windows. The fringe of creeping ampelopsis that softened 
the outline of their casements flung hues of limpid green 
upon the white ceiling, stained flatly with gold and emerald 
reflections from the lawn below. The soporific music of a 
lawn-mower rose and fell in measured cadence, bringing to 
Guy Openshaw’s bedroom the consolatory odours of fresh-cut 
grass. From the branches of the garden beech that spread its 
verdancy like a poplin skirt over a vast circumference of lawn, 
a drowsy blackbird sang, too drunk with sleep and sunlight to 
articulate his own content, but distilling it unsteadily from his 
precarious pulpit as though the sheer weight of such beatitude 
must surely overtopple him and bring both song and singer to 
the ground. No other songster of tree and hedgerow has this 
power to phrase the languid loveliness of summer heat; syrup 
of sheer sunlight drops from his yellow bill, thick with the 
gathered sweetness of the countryside. Thus, and so, had this 
bird’s kinsman sung often to Guy Openshaw from the topmost 
bough of the Suddaby walnut tree at Whinsett. Never did 


The Tree of the Garden 231 

these mellow notes of mournful indolence fall on his ears but 
that his heart sickened with its old sickness. All Whinsett 
came back into it like a great hunger, a great emptiness, a great 
desire. The bird broke out into its deep-billed song, and he 
hushed his heart to hear. It was the Credo of the country¬ 
side; phrase by phrase he followed in inward silence, like a 
worshipper. How true, how pure, how beautiful this faith 
was. It called to him. All Whinsett called to him. He could 
bear it no longer. Now was the moment. Now . . . before 
the idle stream of conversation drifted purpose and himself 
apart; before his mother came back to frustrate resolution. 

“Do you want me to read to you, Guy?” Charlotte Lattimer 
enquired. 

“ .... I want you to do something else for me—if you 
will!” Guy Openshaw replied. He spoke all at once in an 
altered voice; a voice of sudden eagerness that shook slightly 
(or so she fancied) beneath the stress of meaning put upon it. 
“. . . Will you, Charlotte?” It was a tone he had never 
used to her before. She flushed under it. Her eyes dropped 
before his, through fear they might betray untimely the thoughts 
behind them. 

“If it is anything I can do ... ” she temporised. 

“It is something you can do,” he said; “easily, Charlotte. 
I want you to write a letter for me. Will you?” 

A letter—only a letter! After the first emotion of dis¬ 
appointment her eyes found courage to look at him once more. 
But some of the recent colour had left her cheek already. She 
was paler. And her heart, for some inexplicable reason, was 
beating fast. 

“Yes, I can write a letter for you if you wish, Guy. Do 
you mean now? At once?” 

He said “Please! ...” and for a moment closed his eyes as 
if to get a better purchase on his thoughts. “You will find 
envelopes and paper in that writing case ... I rather fancy 
there is no ink here. You might use the pencil instead.” She 
offered to fetch ink from his mother’s writing-table in the 


2 3 2 The Tree of the Garden 

morning room, if he desired, but Guy Openshaw countered 
the suggestion in haste. “No, no. Don’t go downstairs, Char¬ 
lotte. I’d rather you didn’t. I want this to be . . . between 
ourselves. I don’t wish even my mother to know. At least— 
not yet. For the present it must be kept secret. Can you keep 
a secret? Will you? You promise?” 

She promised. Anybody but Guy Openshaw might have 
seen that half the brightness, half the solicitude and enthusiasm 
for service, had died out of the girl’s voice and face. But Guy 
Openshaw noted naught of this. Why, he was too weak as 
yet. And then, the girl moved between the window and his 
eyes; he only saw the light that clung like a soft corona to the 
outlines of her body. And besides, this was Charlotte Latti- 
mer, the daughter of his mother’s friend. They had known 
each other from childhood. How should he notice anything 
in one so long familiar to him? She arranged the sheets of 
paper on the table, addressed her pencil to the page as if await¬ 
ing his dictation, and said, “Yes; I am quite ready . . 
without raising her eyes. 

He considered some time before speaking, and she realised— 
still gazing on the paper—that he was in difficulties how to 
begin. At last, hurriedly, and in a lowered voice of caution, 
he gave her her first words: “My dearest Thursday ...” 

“Thursday?” The strangeness of the concluding word 
caused her to look up enquiringly. “Am I to write that down ? 
Is it ... a name?” 

He answered, smiling faintly: “Yes; it is a name. I was 
puzzled, too, when first I heard it.” He forced himself to add: 
“It is a girl’s name, Charlotte.” 

She said: “Indeed!” 

Once upon a time, quite recently—before the accident— 
Charlotte Lattimer would have lent ears of incredulous amuse¬ 
ment to this disclosure, tickled by the thought that Guy Open¬ 
shaw of all young men—this paragon of every virtue, the idol 
of his foolish mother’s heart—had intelligence enough to keep 
such a secret hid from her. She would have experienced a thrill 


233 


The Tree of the Garden 

of half-malicious joy at Mrs. Openshaw’s discomfiture. But 
the shifting of a degree in an emotion alters our whole concord¬ 
ance with the external world. Her curiosity sat devoid of 
appetite before this rich and edifying fare. There burned no 
spark of triumph in her heart. Thursday! It is a girl’s name, 
Charlotte! She might have been sure. Her very hatred of it 
told her so. 

“Perhaps ...” Guy Openshaw decided after a pause, for 
the silence of this seated figure assumed slowly, in his mind, the 
force and severity of censure, “Perhaps I had better tell you 
the whole story. I think, before you write anything more, I 
ought to. It’s only fair to you. Will you listen to me, Char¬ 
lotte? Is all this boring you too frightfully? Do you mind?” 

“Of course I don’t mind, Guy. But don’t feel compelled to 
tell me anything you’d rather not. I’ve no desire to know 
anything . . . that doesn’t concern me—unless you want 
me to.” 

“I do want you to, Charlotte. I’ve been wanting to tell 
you ever since the first time you came to see me. I wanted to 
ask you to help me, then; but I couldn’t screw up courage 
enough. I wasn’t sure of you. How strange it seems! All 
our lives we are supposed to have been friends, and yet it’s only 
since this accident that we have really come to know one 
another. Turn your chair round. Draw it a little nearer. 
That’s better! Now . . . how am I to begin? There’s an 
awful lot to tell you, Charlotte. Promise me you won’t laugh. 
This is all deadly earnest, remember. If you were to laugh, 
or show the least ridicule—I couldn’t bear it. To me it’s a 
sacred matter. I want to keep it sacred between us. I want 
to feel that I have all your help and friendship on my side. 
Can you understand my feelings, Charlotte?” 

In a low voice she said: “I think so, Guy.” 

“I was certain. I felt sure I could count on you. Well, 
then ...” He hesitated no longer, but broke into the story 
of his passion. Showed Thursday Hardrip to her in every flat¬ 
tering pose and advantageous light of rapture. “If only you 


234 


The Tree of the Garden 

could see her, Charlotte! I simply can’t describe her beauty. 
It is something beyond the power of words. Something haunt¬ 
ing and unfathomable, like that blackbird’s song. He might 
be singing about her! Even her smiles have a depth of extraor¬ 
dinary sadness, as though her heart below were still in shadow, 
and only her lips caught the sunlight. The expressions that 
pass over her face are wonderful. . . . She is not tall; not so 
tall as you, I fancy, by a matter of inches. But for all that she 
seems . . . Her eyes . . . Her hair . . . Her voice ...” Thus 
and thus and thus he told his listener all the details of this 
summer story. Why, not all. Even the madness of lovers has 
its frontiers in reason. Over her birth, her childhood, her 
upbringing, her awful kinsman with the red and ever-weeping 
eyes, he threw a cloak. The girl’s love for him; his love for 
her; her beauty, modesty, devotion, character; her noble 
aspirations after higher things—these were the themes he dwelt 
on. In that respect, perhaps, his wisdom erred. For Charlotte 
Lattimer might have found the bitterer truth more palatable. 
Sweet fruits may suit the stomach of content; but disappoint¬ 
ment finds perverted pleasure in sourer juices. She bore these 
flattering portrayals of another without movement or outward 
discomposure, but when Guy Openshaw besought her to take 
up the pen once more, her hand betrayed reluctance, and the 
face that looked at him showed trouble—as if some conscien¬ 
tious scruple had been awakened in her. 

“Don’t you think . . . you ought perhaps to tell your 
mother, Guy?” she hazarded. 

Such righteousness of counsel, coming from one whom all 
his mother’s teaching had led him to look on with remote in¬ 
dulgence for a spiritual inferior, took him by surprise, chasten¬ 
ing the Pharisee in him. Partly, if the truth be told, this 
comfortable faith in her inferiority had weighed with him in 
making her the first recipient of his confidence. This, and her 
reassuring youth, and her obvious desire to serve, and (yes) 
his awareness of the obligation laid upon her by this plastered 
brow and bandaged arm. And now, despite the pleadings of 


235 


The Tree of the Garden 

such advocates, the troubled face of Charlotte Lattimer showed 
a nice concern that shamed his own. His mother had mis¬ 
judged her; had taught him to misjudge her, too. The girl 
possessed an unsuspected depth of character. He had fallen 
in her estimation; she knew not how to reconcile her eyes with 
his diminished moral stature. Well! he made no effort to 
defend a conduct indefensible. 

“You are quite right, Charlotte,” he acknowledged. “I 
ought to tell my mother. I ought to have broken this to her 
days ago. It’s been a perfect load on my conscience. But you 
know my mother. I don’t need to be warned that what I have 
to tell her will hurt her dreadfully. And I have been such a 
frightful source of trouble to her lately, I have cost her so much 
care and suffering, that I can’t bear the thought of laying 
another burden on her. At least . . . not yet. Later on, of 
course, I shall. I must. But then—all this while, what is to 
happen to Thursday? My silence must seem dreadful to her. 
Day by day . . . and still no word from me. Oh! it’s too 
terrible to think of, Charlotte. I can’t keep the poor girl in 
suspense any longer. You see that, don’t you! It’s my duty. 
I’m in honour bound. Take up the pencil like a dear girl, and 
help me. Quick, Charlotte. Before my mother comes back.” 

For the mere fraction of a moment she made no move 
responsive to his invocation, as if the battle with her conscience 
were still being waged. But her lips offered no further pro¬ 
test. She sat down without a word, pencil in hand, and the 
letter was written. It suffered in warmth of tone, no doubt, 
by reason of the circumstances in which it was composed, and 
the nice scruples of the scribe to be considered. But with all 
its limitations it was a letter—the fulfillment of a sacred 
pledge; the epiphany of faith—albeit draped in borrowed 
robes. An unutterable emotion of gratitude welled up in Guy 
Openshaw when the page of pencil-script at last was folded; 
sealed. “Thank you, Charlotte!” he said. The breath that 
uttered the words seemed to mount straight from the depths 
of his heart to heaven, like the flight of liberated birds. “You 


236 The Tree of the Garden 

don’t know how different you have made me feel. There 
seems such comfort in me as I have not known for weary 
days.” 

He tendered his free hand to her in sign-manual of the debt 
acknowledged. She took it with fingers so chill as to draw an 
exclamation from him. 

“How cold your hand is!” 

“It often is,” she said. 

He held it for a moment, pulling on it gently. If Charlotte 
Lattimer had yielded to that tension, who knows!—he might 
have drawn her face down towards his own and kissed her. 
Nay, there lurked no trace of infidelity to Thursday Hardrip 
in the thought. There was but gratefulness, acknowledg¬ 
ment—the surge of sudden friendship from the weakened body 
of recognisance. But Charlotte Lattimer yielded nothing to 
the gentle tension of his hand. At the far extremity of her 
outstretched arm Guy Openshaw sensed a fine but firm resist¬ 
ance. Had she divined the nature of his impulse? He feared 
she had. Once again her strength of principle reproached his 
own; recalled him gently to obligations unperceived or over¬ 
looked. There dwelt a fine spirit in the girl; her character 
had the strength and delicacy of a spire. It reassured his faith, 
at least, in the integrity of her friendship. His secret was safe 
with her; she would preserve the seal of confidence unbroken. 
He relinquished her hand with a conclusive smile of gratitude 
and friendship, and as she passed from him his thoughts sped 
with impulsive joy to Whinsett. For the first time since he 
reawoke to life he evoked the image of Thursday Hardrip 
without pain. Himself was postman, plodding up the Whin- 
sett road; himself put this magic letter into the girl’s hand; 
beheld the wondrous birth of joy upon her face. Yes! the dark 
hour was gone by for both of them. They could live in each 
other’s thoughts again with the unclouded freedom of faith 
and love. 


The Tree of the Garden 


237 


6 

Charlotte Lattimer passed out of the room with a sickness 
at heart. The atmosphere of this secluded house, whose per¬ 
fect peacefulness had seemed to her of late like heaven, pressed 
now upon her consciousness with the weight of lead. 

All her life she had known Guy Openshaw. That was the 
mistake of it; their very intimacy had divided them. Circum¬ 
stance, not election, made them friends. Her father and Guy’s 
father had been inseparables, and the attachment of these two 
pervaded both homes in a dilute form. After their deaths its 
tradition was piously embalmed by their widows, less out of a 
spirit of affinity than a tearful respect of the dead. Friendship 
between them became a formula. At most the term repre¬ 
sented a sanction conferred on both families to look deeper and 
closer into their respective shortcomings; friendship was the 
lens by means of which they magnified each other’s faults and 
detected imperfections mercifully hid from strangers. Never, 
in point of fact, had Charlotte Lattimer looked upon the son 
of Mrs. Openshaw with her own unaided eyes; nor had he 
read her in any context save that prompted by his mother’s 
guideful forefinger. Each had been kept isolated from the 
other in a fine integument of family prejudice. Guy Open¬ 
shaw had treated Charlotte with the exaggerated respect for 
one of corruptive superficiality who must be held at arm’s 
length. She had seen in him but the spoilt object of a mother’s 
worship; a paradigm of book virtue to be shunned for his 
tediousness and laughed at with half-contemptuous amusement 
as the figure of a young man most maternally mismodelled. 

And then this mishap had befallen, changing everything. 
In the first moments of remorse for what had happened there 
seemed no sacrifice of which Charlotte Lattimer felt herself 
incapable to repair the evil wrought. Romantically viewed, 
it was her duty. The hand that hurt should heal. And all at 
once, out of his whiteness and weakness, as if transfigured, she 
had the revelation of the new, reborn Guy Openshaw. Sitting 


238 The Tree of the Garden 

by his bedside, watching his closed eyes, awaiting the fine smile 
that illuminated his lips like young sunlight, studying the 
fragile beauty of his features, the perfectness of brow and cheek, 
she was amazed to think such patent qualities had passed un¬ 
recognised so long. And then, as his smile strengthened and 
the brightness came into his eyes and speech returned to his lips, 
there seemed to be a reciprocal growth in her own bosom. The 
development was not unconscious; she fostered it. She threw 
open her heart to the entertainment of every hope, like a win¬ 
dow to light and air. The thing waxing so visibly between 
them, gaining strength from day to day—what could it be but 
friendship turning slowly golden love-ripe like a great melon 
in the propitious climate of the sick chamber? 

Indeed, beneath the dawn-like flush of hope in which old 
prejudices seemed melting, and the old antagonisms of life¬ 
long friendship half dissolved away, something of the wisdom 
of Mrs. Openshaw’s training of her son began to make itself 
apparent not less to Mrs. Lattimer than to Charlotte. “After 
all, perhaps it has been well. Perhaps it has been very well, 
Charlotte. It has served at all events to keep Guy out of 
mischief. You know what boys are. Particularly if Guy’s 
disposed to take after his father. But for his mother he might 
have had half the girls in the district running after him. He’s 
certainly rich enough. As it is . . . you’re the only friend he 
has. You have him all to yourself. It’s your own fault if he 
doesn’t take a liking to you. Don’t pretend you aren’t fond 
of him. I know you are.” 

And so this insubstantial seed of hope, nursed in the secret 
bosom first of all, grew up and spread acknowledged branches 
to the sky. Love became an organised campaign. Guy Open¬ 
shaw’s affections were not simply yearned for; they were 
stalked and hunted. And in full cry, with a fair scent and a 
kill in view, the quarry went to ground. This bubble, charged 
with their united breath of hope, and resplendent with pris¬ 
matic promise, burst suddenly in mid-air. Not alone the loss 
of a prize so deeply coveted for its own sake was what Char- 


239 


The Tree of the Garden 

lotte Lattimer had to bear. The realisation of her reckless 
waste of hopes and fears upon a cause already lost, turned to 
mortification. She was angry with herself for her blindness; 
angry with her mother for her insensate optimism; angry with 
Mrs. Openshaw for her misleading confidence ; angry with Guy, 
with Thursday Hardrip,—with all that had contributed to her 
deception and discomfiture. To lose is one thing; but to be 
forestalled, outwitted, is another. Fool that she had been to 
let this happen! Why had she not sought to win him sooner, 
when he was heart-free and might be won? In the depth of 
her despondency it seemed as if she had loved Guy Openshaw 
all her life, to such extent does disappointment tamper with the 
testimony of the feelings. And just because she stooped to dis¬ 
play no tell-tale light in the honest window of affection he had 
passed her by, throwing away his heart on some disreputable 
creature of the countryside. As if that were not a slight enough 
to put upon her, he must needs implicate her in this con¬ 
temptible affair, misappropriating her sympathies to his own 
selfish ends. What would Mrs. Openshaw think of her! What 
would her mother say? She ought to have declined the task 
imposed on her. At once. Emphatically. Refusal had trem¬ 
bled on her lips; she had been on the point of laying down the 
pencil. “Guy! I can’t! I won’t! You ought to know . . . 
by this time. It’s too much to ask of me.” But even in the 
act of writing all hope of him away, the womanly instinct 
prompted her to try—even at this late hour—meanly to court 
his favour. 

Considerations such as these tormented her as she descended 
the broad staircase to Mrs. Openshaw’s hall. Gusts of bleak 
emotion blew her irresistibly along like a dead leaf hustled by 
rude winds. She had no consciousness of feet. To herself she 
seemed rather a disembodied injury; a floating wrong. 


240 


The Tree of the Garden 


7 

“Charlotte!” 

It was Mrs. Openshaw’s voice apostrophising her in a tone 
of mild astonishment and reproach from the doorway of the 
morning room. “Going so soon ? Are you leaving Guy ?” 
The imputation, undeserved, stung her to the quick. She suf¬ 
fered it to sting her to the quick. Less than that, indeed, would 
have caused the cup of sorrow to overflow. She turned on 
Mrs. Openshaw a countenance that struggled in the grip of 
overmastering tears, and without speaking would have passed 
her by. 

Why did she weep? Why does any woman weep? Nay, if 
we could understand one tithe of the secret motives that prompt 
her tears at all times we might come near to a comprehension 
of the origin of the universe. Did she choose her moment 
wilfully to weep before Guy’s mother? Was there cunning, 
treachery, or only weakness in the tears that flowed from her? 
That never will be known. Tears are a language of emer¬ 
gency employed to serve the sex when words fail, or when their 
usage would be shameful. 

And they wrung Mrs. Openshaw’s heart. Her first thought 
fled up the flight of stairs to Guy, rendering her breathless 
with the urgency of ascent. She laid a convulsive hand of 
terror on Charlotte Lattimer’s arm. “Charlotte! Speak! You 
frighten me. What is it? How is Guy?” 

“Guy is very well, Mrs. Openshaw,” the girl controlled her 
quivering lips to say. “I think he wants to sleep.” 

“Sleep!” repeated Mrs. Openshaw, with a hand under her 
heart. “Guy is very well? But you are crying. Why are 
you crying? What is the meaning of it, Charlotte? Some¬ 
thing has happened. I know something has happened—your 
face betrays you. You are keeping something back from me. 
What is it?” Behind the quickening insistence of her speech 
a volume of suspicions grew. 

“It is nothing, Mrs. Openshaw,” Charlotte Lattimer pro- 


The Tree of the Garden 241 

tested with wet eyes and trembling lips belying every word. 
“Please don’t ask me . . . any more.” 

“But I do ask you,” Mrs. Openshaw declared, and her face 
was lit up with the conflagration of a hundred dread surmises. 
“I must ask you. I should not be a mother if I failed to ask 
you. Charlotte, I insist on knowing.” Her eye stabbed the 
girl’s hand with a swift, raptorial glance. “What have you 
got there? A letter?” 

Yes. It was the letter that Charlotte Lattimer’s distress 
had utterly lost thought of. The letter she was sworn to guard 
from all eyes. She drew it out of sight behind her skirt with 
a gesture of secrecy and consternation. If anything could have 
substantiated Mrs. Openshaw’s unutterable fears, surely it was 
that guilty movement, swift and imploring. 

“Don’t . . . Mrs. Openshaw!” the girl besought her. “I 
ought not to have let you see that. I did not mean to. It is 
nothing. . . . Only a secret. . . .” 

“A secret!” All Mrs. Openshaw’s worst, unworthiest sus¬ 
picions rose up clamorous at that word, like a whole rookery 
on the wing, darkening the sky of reason. In an instant heaven 
reeled above her, its blue faith assailed and broken. Fears 
alone, and a quivering indignation, governed her now. All 
sense of spiritual direction seemed lost. From paths of duty 
traversing fields of conscience, fenced by scruples, she broke 
away. “A secret? From me? My son has secrets from his 
mother? Never . . . Never! I will not believe it. How 
dare you, Charlotte! Show me that letter. I ask to see it.” 

She threw out white peremptory fingers in the direction of 
the thing demanded, withheld from her still by the girl’s 
shrinking hand. “A secret from his own mother? He con¬ 
fides in you—a stranger—rather than in me? Do you hear, 
Charlotte, unless you show me that envelope at once I will go 
straight up to my son.” She made, in fact, a sudden move¬ 
ment, as if she meant to put the threat in execution then and 
there, and dismayed by this belief in her intent, Charlotte 


242 The Tree of the Garden 

Lattimer’s resistance wavered, with a sudden declaration of 
its weakness. 

“Oh, Mrs. Openshaw! Please . . . Please! Don’t say a 
word to Guy. Promise me you’ll never tell him. I gave my 
solemn word.” 

“Let me see that letter,” Mrs. Openshaw reiterated im¬ 
placably, feeling the girl’s resistance quake and crumble before 
the assaults of her righteous authority. 

“Promise me . . .” Charlotte Lattimer besought her. 
“Promise me. . . .” But the words constituted no longer a 
stipulation, they were only the feeble protests of surrender. 
Mrs. Openshaw’s imperious white hand crushed the conscien¬ 
tious scruples that writhed in it to naught. In dead silence the 
girl gave up the letter intrusted to her honour, and Mrs. Open¬ 
shaw in silence took it. 


8 

The best of women are at all times capable of acting like 
the very worst—provided once they see dishonour as a duty. 
She took the envelope and read the name and place inscribed 
upon it with terrific self-possession, as though her righteous¬ 
ness had its unshakable summit up in heaven. That done, the 
imposing fabric of composure utterly collapsed, and she burst 
into tears. There was not more strength in her structure than 
would have sustained a house of cards. 

Never since her husband’s death, when her incredulous eyes 
opened to the knowledge of that other fateful letter, had her 
soul tasted such bitterness as this. He had deceived her. It 
had come to pass at last. Her own son had deceived his mother. 
In an hour when she deemed him reborn to her; given back to 
the craving arms of her love in all his innocence and truth, he 
harboured dreadful secrets from her such as this. 

Oh! it pierced her to the heart. To think he should humil¬ 
iate her so before the daughter of her friend. She had been 
right. Her intuitions had deceived her less cruelly than her 
son when they affirmed that youth turned to youth; that years 
conspired together; that the inevitable time arrives when a 


243 


The Tree of the Garden 

mother owns no more power over her son than does a tree over 
the leaf once fallen from it. All the while that her faith had 
left these two together, refusing to suspect the least harm in 
them, they had been plotting her dispossession and overthrow. 

“How could you, Charlotte!” she said. “Oh, how could 
you deceive me so! After all my trust and confidence. I 
have trusted you . . . almost like a daughter. And to reward 
me thus. Oh, how could you!” , 

“7, Mrs. Openshaw?” the girl protested, trembling beneath 
the burden of her own trouble, and stung by the injustice of a 
charge so undeserved. “. . . . Please! You are dreadfully 
unkind. I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t want to write 
the letter. I tried not to . . . but Guy—” She was allowed 
to proceed no further than this upon a path tending so ob¬ 
viously to accusation, for Mrs. Openshaw broke in at once. 
“Guy!” she cried. “Are you going to be heartless enough to 
blame poor Guy? It is wicked of you, Charlotte. You know 
—who should be likely to know it better than you—that Guy 
has lain at death’s door. Even now ... he is weak as a child. 
He is not responsible for himself. If he were, do you imagine 
for one moment he would descend to such an act as this ? Oh, 
you know he would not.” 

A momentary indignation broke loose from her. “All that 
he is,” she said, “is due to you. You have nearly robbed me 
of my son, Charlotte, and now you seek to rob me of his trust; 
to undermine his love of me.” From the lips of Charlotte 
Lattimer there burst the suffering remonstrance: “Oh, Mrs. 
Openshaw! It is not true. Such a thought was never in my 
mind.” 

“You sought to deceive me,” Mrs. Openshaw continued, 
without regard to the girl’s protest. “You would have de¬ 
ceived me if you could. You would have helped him to build 
a wall of falsehood and deceit between us. Oh, how can I 
ever trust you after this? How can you ever hope to have 
my confidence again? I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed in 
you, Charlotte. I had thought better things of you. I had 


244 The Tree of the Garden 

begun to offer you my heart—and this is how you requite me!” 

For awhile her persecutor—making futile swoops in empty 
righteousness—knew not what else to say, nor how to advance 
further. Here in her hand she held the letter. There were 
things in that envelope, perhaps, touching the health of the 
writer’s very soul which, as his mother, she had a right to 
know. Yet how could she obtain possession of the knowledge 
due to her? By opening the letter? Nay! Even now she 
had cooled sufficiently from the first heat of indignation to 
realise that such a course could never be. By challenging 
truth at the lips of her son? Nay, that, too, her shrinking 
conscience told her was unthinkable. Already her behaviour in 
this affair began to horrify her. She must act quickly, there¬ 
fore, before the fire of determination died down beneath grey 
ashes of remorse. With her last remaining energy she led the 
way into the morning room. “Charlotte, I must speak with 


9 

She closed the door against external ears and influences, as 
when a life hangs in the balance, and faced Mrs. Lattimer’s 
daughter. “You wrote this letter for Guy?” 

Charlotte Lattimer swallowed something in her throat with 
difficulty. “Yes, Mrs. Openshaw.’’ For she, too, in her atti¬ 
tude towards Guy’s mother pursued a policy, no less than Mrs. 
Openshaw herself. She was not so deep in shame and trouble 
as to be incapable of choosing a demeanour most calculated to 
placate Mrs. Openshaw and recommend her own cause. En¬ 
trenched behind this outward semblance of contrition her mind 
was busy; her brain alert. At heart she entertained contemptu¬ 
ous pity for Mrs. Openshaw’s exaggerated concern, but it 
seemed expedient for her outer self to wear the garments of 
humility, suffer her conscience to be moulded like potter’s clay 
in these emphatic, righteous hands. Already, taking sanctuary 
in Mrs. Openshaw’s larger trouble, her own trouble—albeit 
suitably externalised—seemed grown the less. 


245 


The Tree of the Garden 

“You wrote this letter for Guy?” 

“Yes, Mrs. Openshaw.” 

“At Guy’s dictation?” 

“Yes, Mrs. Openshaw.” 

With each assent she gulped down the something in her 
throat. It might have been a nauseous pill, swallowed obedi¬ 
ently at Mrs. Openshaw’s behest. 

“What is in the letter?” 

“Oh, Mrs. Openshaw!” At that she protested weakly. 
“Don’t ask me that. It was a promise. I gave my word.” 

“What is in the letter?” Mrs. Openshaw reiterated, as if 
she had not heard the supplication. 

And seeing the avowal tremble still irresolutely on the girl's 
lips, awaiting for conscience’ sake the final pressure of coercion: 
“Why do you hesitate? If you hesitate to confide to me what 
you have not hesitated to listen to and write ... it can only 
be that. . . . Charlotte!” Her voice began to shake again 
beneath the new anxieties that charged it. “Don’t let me do 
Guy the wrong of thinking that such a horrible suspicion can 
be true. It cannot be. For Guy’s sake, for your own sake, 
for all our sakes . . . deny it. Tell me there is nothing in 
this letter I might not read. If you have any regard for me 
or for my son, Charlotte, set my mind at rest. I implore you!” 

io 

Little by little, in the profound stillness of Mrs. Openshaw’s 
morning room, her son’s secret was exhumed from the frail 
tomb in which his trust had lodged it. The awful features of 
the thing concealed were stripped of their wrappings at last, 
and she gazed on them through tears of pity, horror, and com¬ 
punction, murmuring: “My poor boy! My poor, misguided, 
darling boy!” 

She strove to screen his fault from Charlotte Lattimer’s eyes, 
even to the extent of taking responsibility for it. “. . . He 
is not to blame, Charlotte. I am to blame. I was forgetting 


The Tree of the Garden 


246 

my duties as a mother. I left him too greatly to his own de¬ 
vices. I thought more of home, my garden, my ease and com¬ 
fort—than of my son’s welfare. I see it now. I see it now. 
It makes me doubt my fitness to be his mother. I have relaxed 
my duties through shame of being laughed at. I have listened 
too much to the counsel of others. I have thought more of 
propitiating their contempt than of considering my son’s well¬ 
being.” Her distress brought accusation perilously close to 
Mrs. Lattimer’s door at this juncture, and Charlotte Lattimer 
saw her own mother more than adumbrated in these troubled 
words of confidence. Mrs. Openshaw perceived the spectre 
too; it grew between them; it assumed a shape; they looked 
into each other’s faces through the shadow of it. But Mrs. 
Openshaw’s distress lay too deep for accusations or the paltry 
satisfaction of old injuries. Only her son’s welfare moved her. 
“It can never be!” she said with emphasis. “It can never, 
never be!” Her face betokened horror at the mere idea. 
“Why, he is but a boy, Charlotte—a child. He does not know 
what marriage means. And then . . . this dreadful girl! 
Without education, without influences, without anything in 
common with such a nature as Guy’s. Oh, Guy, Guy] what¬ 
ever made you do it! How could you treat your mother so! 
You must have put her altogether from your heart before you 
could contemplate an act like this.” The reproach rose to her 
lips out of a full bosom, and she disavowed the words at once. 
“What am I saying, Charlotte! I am unjust to my son. It 
is wicked to judge him so. We do not know all. When we 
know all we shall only have pity for him; pity and admiration. 
Not reproaches. Guy would never do anything to earn those. 

“Thank you, thank you, Charlotte.” The girl’s ready en¬ 
dorsement of her conduct melted Guy’s mother to renewed 
tears. “You have been very helpful to me. I owe you—Guy 
owes you—more than I am able to express.” Emotion was 
necessary to consecrate the dreadful doings of this afternoon, 
and give them a character irreproachable and divine. Saints 


The Tree of the Garden 247 

are consecrated with a halo; their conduct was canonised with 
a kiss. She took Charlotte Lattimer into her arms for the 
second time and laid agitated lips on the girl’s smooth cheek, 
saying (for some inexplicable reason), “God bless you!” 

. . You will not tell Guy!” the girl found opportunity 
to murmur. “Mrs. Openshaw! you won’t forget your prom¬ 
ise.” The words, all garbed in hot and eager breath, had a 
character that marred the purity of this benediction. Mrs. 
Openshaw conceded no answer with her lips; she squeezed the 
girl’s hand with rapt intensity. “Come and sit with Guy to¬ 
morrow, Charlotte. Just as usual. He looks forward to your 
visits.” For a moment a look of terror showed in Charlotte’s 
eye, as if the thought of Guy and of that fateful bedroom 
horrified her. 

“And the letter?” she said after awhile, in a lowered voice. 
“Am I to post it?” 

The letter? The letter that Mrs. Openshaw still held by 
a corner in her guilty fingers! All this talking; all this read¬ 
justment of conscience and palliation of conduct had not altered 
that. There it was, this staring fact; four-cornered and as¬ 
sertive. Mrs. Openshaw looked at it, and her composure fal¬ 
tered once again. “The letter, Charlotte? . . . Post it? To 
herf ... I do not know what to do. This has come upon 
me like a thunderbolt. Leave me, child; I must think it 
over.” 


11 

She thought it over. She prayed for light from heaven. 
None came. And the letter was not posted; it went, unopened, 
into her late husband’s secretaire, where—side by side with old 
locks of hair, and early letters bound with faded ribbon too 
sacred by association ever to be superseded, and Guy’s first 
precious manuscripts—it lay where (of old) that other, fateful 
letter lay. She dared not charge her soul with its destruction. 
But post it! That was impossible. She must think it over. 


248 The Tree of the Garden 

Her spiritual conscience stood upright before the face of 
heaven. But her earthly conscience wavered. Beneath this 
dreadful secret torn from Charlotte Lattimer she stumbled 
like one bearing a load that the shoulders lacked strength either 
to lift or let down. Most terrible of all, she was afraid of her 
son. Afraid. Desperately afraid. Afraid of his eyes, lest 
they should surprise her guilty knowledge of his secret. Afraid 
of his voice, lest some chance phrase should wreck her self- 
possession. When he said “Mother . . and paused ever so 
slightly after the word, her heart beat like a bird in a net; 
fearful of the meshes of silence closing over her. And when, 
that first tense moment of alarm surmounted, he asked some 
simple question far remote from the subject of her fears, she 
drew breath of inexpressible relief, as for deliverance from 
danger. The thing she craved for most of all, her son’s prox¬ 
imity, turned to a fine torture. She had the perpetual im¬ 
pulse to flee from his presence; to escape the ordeal imposed 
each moment by looks, or speech, or silence. 

Why did he not speak? Oh, if only he would have spoken! 
If only his courage would have plucked, however timidly, at 
this dreadful curtain drawn between them—how easy all else 
would be. She would have torn the veil aside with her two 
hands. At a word; at the first look of confession she would 
have melted into forgiveness; reached out arms for his help 
and comfort. But that he did not know. He feared her looks 
as she feared his; hid his secret from her as she hid hers from 
him—always seeking consolation in the letter sent. Yes. 
Everything hung upon the letter. It marked the turning 
point. When Thursday Hardrip’s answer came, and he pos¬ 
sessed the re-affirmation of the girl’s faith in her own dear, 
struggling, unlevel script, there should be an end of this in¬ 
tolerable secrecy. His mother would see the letter; would 
bring it to him, in all likelihood, with her own hands; would 
watch him as he read it. “News from Whinsett, Guy?” And 
he would tell her all. News from Whinsett. Yes, indeed! 


The Tree of the Garden 2 49 

Prodigious news from Whinsett. “Mother! . . . there is 
something I want to tell you.” 

How often he rehearsed that phrase. Yet not more often 
than she built verbal bridges to span the gulf between them. 
“Guy, dear! forgive your mother. It may be foolishness 
. . . but latterly I seem to feel that there has crept a some¬ 
thing between us; something we are holding back from one 
another. Something perhaps . . . that you long to tell your 
mother, and yet dare not. Oh, Guy! if I am right, let me 
beseech you . . . keep silence no longer. A mother’s heart 
understands everything, forgives everything. It lives on for¬ 
giveness. Without something daily to forgive ... it dies.” 
How easy it all was. Away from him she never lacked a 
phrase to reach his heart. But in his presence she stood word- 
bound ; the fluidity of emotion froze in her. Her purpose be¬ 
came a glacier, locked in lips of ice. 

If she had had leisure she might have wept at the awful 
transformation in her heart and home. But she had no leisure; 
she had no respite. All the while she must wrestle with the 
urgent problem: “What is to be done?” 

And if any proof be needful of the extremity of her distress, 
it is to be found in her appeal to Mrs. Lattimer for aid and 
counsel at this trying juncture. 

12 

During all their five and twenty years of internecine friend¬ 
ship this was the first occasion on which—even by inference— 
she had admitted Mrs. Lattimer’s title to speak in any wise for 
motherhood. From the hour she was brought to bed of Guy 
these two antagonistic maternities had been at war. Now open, 
now covert, now patched with truces; now breaking forth in 
words; now waged in silence; now going gaily beneath the 
flags of friendship—this warfare had been maintained. Even 
now they met like generals, filled with ceremonious respect 
and a profound contempt for one another’s forces and the 


250 


The Tree of the Garden 

cause each served. What else brought Mrs. Lattimer in haste 
to her friend’s house within two hours of Charlotte’s leaving 
it, but the desire to taste the blood of victory whilst still it 
flowed? To-morrow, w r ho knew! they might be seared and 
dry, these wounds; the veins of confidence staunched ; betray¬ 
ing naught but unresponsive scars. 

“You have heard, of course?” Mrs. Openshaw began, with 
the troubled voice for disclosures. “Charlotte will have told 
you.” 

Mrs. Lattimer reduced the comprehension on her face to 
zero; her countenance reflected Mrs. Openshaw’s enquiry like 
a dull, fat cipher. “Charlotte said something . . . but I 
scarcely took it in. Something about Guy, wasn’t it?—and a 
letter.” She had her daughter’s discretion to protect. “Char¬ 
lotte is not a girl to talk. I get almost angry with her at 
times. What is it all about?” 

If she had had no daughter to consider, Mrs. Openshaw’s 
tremulous disclosure of her son’s folly would have been egg 
and milk to her; vindicating, as it did, all that her wisdom had 
fruitlessly contended for five and twenty years. But now she 
had a daughter’s interests to think of. Duly she subscribed to 
Mrs. Openshaw’s dismay so long as the latter was protesting 
it, but the moment that speech passed by rotation into the 
listener’s mouth, her real unaltered self rose up released; for, 
like all the loquacious, she was the servant, not the mistress of 
her words. 

“Really!” she confessed; “I had begun to think Guy wasn’t 
human. And if you’d had your way with him in everything 
I do believe he wouldn’t have been. You seemed determined 
he never should grow up. You couldn’t be happy unless you 
had him perpetually tied to your apron-strings, and that’s the 
surest way to ruin children. You never seemed to think Guy 
had a human side. You never allowed him to have proper 
friends, like other boys. Guy didn’t know what girls were. 
You never told him. So he’s had to find it all out for himself. 
Naturally! He’s got to know things some time. And if you 


251 


The Tree of the Garden 

won’t let him sweetheart with nice, well brought up, respect¬ 
able girls, he’ll go and make love to the others. You know 
what men are. At any rate, you should ” 

All this, as may be expected, though it shocked Mrs. Open- 
shaw inexpressibly, stung no protest from her. She knew, as 
her friend knew, that the present was no moment for retalia¬ 
tion ; her distress accepted these repugnant sentiments as a 
proper part of her chastisement. “I may have erred,” she said 
with tremulous submission. “Indeed ... I wish my son had 
had a wiser mother to protect and guide him.” 

“Protect and fiddle-sticks!” Mrs. Lattimer rejoined. “He 
doesn’t want protection. At his age. What he wants is lib¬ 
erty, and the right to stand on his own legs. You ought to 
make up your mind that you’re no fit company for your son. 
He’s a man, and you’re a woman; and he’s young—and you’re 
well on to three times his age. Naturally, there are things he 
wants that no mother can give him.” 

It was true. But Mrs. Openshaw clung with drowning 
fingers to veritable straws. Clung even to her own trouble, 
as if it were in some sort a familiar and comfortable home, 
from whose shelter she feared by cunning argument to be 
ejected. Hers was a grief too pure and fine for Mrs. Latti- 
mer’s crude comprehensions. Of spiritual affinities not any¬ 
thing did such a woman know. All her wisdom was worldly. 
She flouted the mere idea of confidence between a mother and 
her son. 

“. . . No secrets between you!” she expostulated, charging 
with unreasonableness Mrs. Openshaw’s familiar words. 
“Stuff and nonsense! Don’t tell me that. There are bound 
to be secrets between you if you pretend to be decent. Do you 
want to make me believe you tell Guy all? Of course you 
don’t. He wants girl friends. That’s what he wants. Why, 
surely to goodness you must have noticed! Anybody that 
knows anything could see it in his eyes. He’s just ripe to fall 
in love.” 

Horrible sentiments! Dreadful utterances to have to listen 


252 The Tree of the Garden 

to; unnatural and untrue. Hotly she would have contested 
this outrageous charge two days ago, had Mrs. Lattimer been 
indiscreet enough to make it—but now! 

“But surely . . Mrs. Openshaw demurred, so greatly 
shocked by her friend’s indictment as to be quite uncertain of 
its tenor. “You do not mean . . . you do not for one moment 
suggest that this can be allowed to go on?” 


13 

Now, to be sure, Mrs. Lattimer had meant to suggest no 
such thing. Much of what she had been saying so airily 
amounted, in plain fact, to little more than the exuberance of 
opinion, licensed by circumstance to trample on the convictions 
of a friend. Something of what she said she meant, no doubt, 
to the extent (that is) that she ever meant anything. But if 
she did not actually mean it, beyond all doubt she thoroughly 
enjoyed it, pushing her opinions to extreme with gusto. 

“Why not?” Mrs. Lattimer inquired, intoxicated with her 
own success. “Why shouldn’t it go on?” 

“What . . . marry her?” Mrs. Openshaw protested, with 
a convulsion of incredulity. “Oh, no, no, no! You cannot 
mean it. Indeed you cannot!” 

“Marry her!” Mrs. Lattimer cried in turn, outraged no less 
by the suggestion imputed to her. “Who’s talking about mar¬ 
riage? Good gracious! I never even hinted at such a thing. 
What! Guy? Marry a creature like that? Preposterous! 
Guy has far too much sense.” 

Mrs. Openshaw said: “Thank goodness you don’t mean 
what I thought. You frightened me. But Guy . . . Guy has 
spoken to this girl. He wants to educate her, remove her from 
her present surroundings. Oh! I don’t know what he doesn’t 
talk of doing—poor noble, generous, misguided boy! Impos¬ 
sible things. Things no mother could ever stand by and sanc¬ 
tion.” Overcome with the horror of it, she broke off suddenly 


The Tree of the Garden 253 

to plead: “Oh, Mrs. Lattimer! pity me. I ask for all the help 
and comfort your friendship can give me at a time like this.” 

“I know ... I know!” Mrs. Lattimer concurred, closing 
her eyes and rocking her head, as her friend did, in brief token 
of understanding and sympathy. “But you are taking it all 
far too seriously, Mrs. Openshaw. Believe me, you are. 
\ ou’ve brought Guy up in such ridiculous ways that the poor 
boy can’t see any outlet but marriage for a little romantic feel¬ 
ing. Of course ... I don’t know how far this affair has 
gone. Guy has his feelings, like most young persons. And 
her feelings will have had something to say in the matter, you 
may be sure.” 

“But what’s to be done?” Mrs. Openshaw demanded, in an 
outburst of revolted helplessness. “Something must be done. 
Matters can’t be left like this.” 

“Done?” Mrs. Lattimer repeated in bewilderment; “Why! 
I’ve just told you what’s to be done. Help Guy to forget all 
about it. Let him have as much young society as he asks for.” 
(She was thinking, of course, of Charlotte.) “I don’t mean 
any sort of silly young people. I mean somebody you know 
and can be sure of. The company of some nice, clean-minded, 
sensible, well-mannered girl would do him a world of good. 
It would help to make a man of him. He would learn to 
appreciate that there’s something more to admire in woman 
than a pretty face.” All this last was obviously aimed at 
Mrs. Openshaw, and it reached its target so nicely that 
humility began to enquire if she had not wronged her friend 
these many years. For the good counsel that Mrs. Lattimer 
had dispensed she was (she said) truly and infinitely grateful. 

“Charlotte . . .” she confessed with shining eyelashes, 
“Charlotte has been of inestimable comfort to me at this 
trying time. She has shown herself utterly unselfish in her 
devotion to Guy’s interests. She has done more than I can 
adequately thank her for. After such proofs of high principle 
and correct feeling I could not seek a more reassuring friend¬ 
ship for my son.” 


254 


The Tree of the Garden 

But this protestation of her confidence in Charlotte removed 
in nowise Guy’s immediate peril. To leave the matter any 
longer—who knows what might arise from it! The girl might 
write. She might take some ignorant and shameful step. 

“I feel . . .” she said, with rising apprehension, “that by 
some means she should be seen by somebody at once. Oh! if 
only I were free to leave my son. If only for a few brief 
minutes I might speak -with her!” 

“Speak with her?” cried Mrs. Lattimer, aghast. “You? 
Speak with that creature! Whatever for?” 

“To reason with her,” Mrs. Openshaw affirmed, her eye 
lucent with mild and stedfast courage. “To show her the 
harm she is doing to my son. To appeal to her better nature.” 

“To her better nature!” Mrs. Lattimer threw up protest¬ 
ing hands once more towards the unseen deities. “Good 
gracious! You speak to her! For goodness sake! don’t think 
of such a wild cat scheme. There’s far too much trust and 
tears and better nature about you. No wonder you’re tricked 
and overcharged by all the tradesmen in the district. You’ll 
ruin Guy’s chance if you interfere this time. You’ve inter¬ 
fered too much already. That’s been the mischief of it.” 

Mrs. Openshaw’s face confessed the justice of the accusation. 
She was too frail, too wavering an advocate for her son. Oh! 
if she had only been a man. 

Her face assumed a shape of chiselled resolution. “My 
mind is made up. Barnard shall see her for me.” 

“Barnard!” Mrs. Lattimer rolled her eyes in a large orbit 
of bewilderment at the mention of her son’s name. “Good 
gracious! what next! Are you talking seriously?” 

“It has been in my mind ever since Charlotte left. I cannot 
go myself. You say I should not go. I feel you are right. 
But who else is there to go? Something must be done. At 
any moment Guy may confide in me; he may disclose the 
whole, pitiable story. Oh! don’t you see the difficulty I am 
in? My love for Guy may prove stronger than my judgment. 
I want to save my boy, not to hurt him with his mother’s 


The Tree of the Garden 255 

c 

weakness. Don’t you agree with me? Tell me you agree 
with me. Help me to help my boy.” 

Time was when Mrs. Lattimer might have laughed con¬ 
temptuously at so dramatic a proposal. But now . . . Why, 
now—for all her judgment looked no less contemptuously on 
Mrs. Openshaw’s panic fear—she had a daughter to consider. 
She was not unwilling to encourage folly, so long as folly 
walked in her direction and seemed prepared to carry the 
parcels for them both. 

So the conversation shaped its course between these women 
and came to end in final whispers of mutual understanding. 
At Whinsett, in George Hardrip’s kitchen, a girl with soulless 
eyes washed up the tea-things, drawing from time to time a bare 
forearm across her brow. “He wean’t write to me!” all the 
while, despite her close-locked lips, a voice within her re¬ 
iterated. “It disn’t stand to sense he should. He’s done wi’ 
me.” From his bed Guy Openshaw flung looks invocative, like 
arms, towards the limpid evening sky. For days this sky had 
barred his hopes with a solid wall of impenetrable, unyielding 
blue. Now the casement of high heaven lay open wide, giving 
his soul access to the spaciousness of hope. For his letter to 
Thursday Hardrip was at last written. Written. Posted. 
Already on its way to her. He had no care; only a serene 
content possessed him now, as if all life were one great breath 
of gratitude and peace. 




IX 

I 

B ARNARD LATTIMER alighted at the Dimmlesea 
station with a feeling of contempt for the place and 
for the professional errand that brought him. True, 
old White Lattimer’s conception of the scope and practice 
of the law had been built on broader lines, excluding little (in 
point of fact) whose service could be charged and paid for. 
But then, White Lattimer was one of those bluff, outspoken, 
fearless characters who lend a dignity to doubtfulness and 
make dishonesty seem august. Rascals stood up rehabilitated 
in his presence, and Hunmouth evil-doers besought his ear 
more earnestly than had he been their Maker. After his death 
(most fittingly commemorated and bemourned) no man suc¬ 
ceeded him—least of all his son. That broad, burly figure— 
scarcely yielding an inch of stature to his bosom friend, John 
Openshaw—that big, well-borne head ; that large, strong, 
reassuring mouth, replete with words of genial wisdom tucked 
away behind its pleated lips, lacked any counterpart in Hun¬ 
mouth. On demise his qualities were fought for and split 
up, at last, between half a score of inferior contestants; but 
Barnard Lattimer was not one. It may be that education 
had spoiled and weakened him, for certainly he displayed no 
aptitude in the defence of petty larcenists, assaulters, and 
inebriates, but drafted testaments and conveyed estate for the 
respectable—his abilities earning little recognition beyond the 
walls of his mother’s house. There his wisdom had been, 
from the first, scarcely less pampered than Guy Openshaw’s 
virtue. Without requiring the least proof of it, without the 
least ability to judge upon such proof if given, Mrs. Lattimer 

25 6 


The Tree of the Garden 257 

had accepted her son’s talents as established, and worshipped 
them (according to her worldly formularies) in undisturbed 
and comfortable faith. It seems, indeed, as if the very nature 
of motherhood should be to worship the unreal. The mere 
presence of a law-book left carelessly exposed on chair or 
table—“Just feel the weight of this, Charlotte! Look at all 
these pages! I don’t know how Barnard ever manages to read 
such stuff; of course he’ll understand every word. I declare 
it makes me positively dizzy to look at it!”—was testimony 
sufficient for his mother of Barnard’s erudition. From his 
earliest days she exalted his intelligence and abased her own, 
finding a complacent joy in the possession of ignorance that 
could acknowledge such a son. Charlotte she would reprove; 
Barnard she never questioned. “If Barnard says so . . was 
her invariable formula, “Barnard will know.” 

Curiously little conversation passed between Mrs. Lattimer 
and her son at any time; not much between Barnard and 
his sister. He might be said to suffer conversation rather than 
take part in it, and lent an ear to his mother’s prattle much 
as adults give infancy a finger to play with. At least, so it 
seemed; so perhaps he wished it to seem. But if we be allowed 
to serve ourselves of short cuts to the estimation of character, 
we may perceive in all this but the effort to retain possession 
of property whose title-deeds are wanting. Two things are 
indispensable to prove wisdom: speech and silence. And though 
no fool can ever hope to talk like a wise man, by dint of 
practice he may aspire to keep silence with the wisest. Of all 
those parts of him that came in superficial contact with the 
world he took conspicuous care—of his hair, teeth, hands, 
speech and raiment; but behind the thin veneer of manner 
much inherent stupidity lay pressed and put away; poor 
mediocre mind-apparel that took him all his time to hide from 
view and disavow. 

Born ten years before Guy Openshaw, more than this mere 
superiority of age divided them. He looked with Lattimer 
contempt on the son of such a mother, and similarly on Mrs. 


258 The Tree of the Garden 

Openshaw as the mother of such a son. As Guy’s trustee, 
as Mrs. Openshaw’s business counsellor and legal adviser, to 
whom jlU the sources of her wealth were known, he had at 
heart that instinctive contempt of faith which the pseudo- 
clever entertain towards those who trust them too implicitly. 
From Barnard, in his capacity of hereditary counsellor, Mrs. 
Openshaw hid nothing; all the weakness of her woman’s 
heart lay open to him. He was the son of her dear husband’s 
friend—she could never forget that. And since the disparity in 
age dispelled all fear of Barnard’s too close friendship with 
Guy, she could view him without prejudice—or very little, 
whereas, had he been Charlotte’s age her heart might have 
stood perpetually on the defensive against his influence. 


2 

Dimmlesea, that had shown to Guy Openshaw ’9 sight as the 
enchanted gateway to Whinsett’s green wonder-world, con¬ 
fessed itse 1 f to Barnard Lattimer the disillusioned remnant of 
a once ambitious watering-place, full of plans in early life to 
lure and recreate the wealth of Hunmouth, now decayed into 
acceptance of its shabby destiny as a purveyor of health and 
cheap enjoyment to a humbler order, whose purses suffice not to 
take them farther afield, and as an assignation ground for 
the glad and gilded youth of Hunmouth. Barnard’s self had 
been here, following the moth. Once, twice, several times 
indeed. He knew his Dimmlesea. He had travelled oack to 
Hunmouth by last trains, on good terms with the guard, and 
had let himself into his mother’s house at midnight—exhaling 
to his own nostrils a faint redolence of face-powder and hair- 
scent that the final cigarette had scarcely yet effaced, but with 
the cool composure of the practised lawyer unimpaired. On 
this subject of his activities Barnard Lattimer kept discreet 
silence in his mother’s house. Within its walls his conduct 
showed not less exemplary than Guy Openshaw’s. From time 
to time a hairpin on his dressing table or a crushed flower or 


The Tree of the Garden ' 259 

crumpled ribbon might betray this wider phase of his in¬ 
terests, but such discoveries were never charged against him; 
they took their part in the tacit understanding preserved by 
Mrs. Lattimer as spacious as possible for her son’s liberty. 
Knowing the best and basest in mankind by stern experience, 
she sought only that her children should pursue the mean 
between extremes. She had no wish that Barnard should be 
any better than the rest of men, provided he was no worse. 
She never put the least invidious question to her son. Her 
faith in his humanity was implicit. “If I can’t trust Barnard 
by this time,” she said, “when am I going to begin? So long 
as he treats me with affection and respect, what else should 
any reasonable mother expect of him?” 

She followed his journey to Whinsett with the excitement 
for some thrilling serial in a magazine. 

“I hope to goodness Barnard won’t be too professional 
when he comes back. I hope he’ll tell us something. That’s 
the worst of your brother. He’s so dreadfully close about 
his business affairs. Your father wasn’t.” 

Whatever interest Charlotte took in Barnard’s journey she 
cloaked beneath an air of repugnance, saying to her mother: 
“Don’t! I don’t want to know anything about it!” 

“But . . . good gracious, child!” her mother expostulated, 
“you should want. It concerns you more than anybody. You’ve 
a right to know.” 

“You haven’t to sit with Guy!” Charlotte Lattimer re¬ 
joined, “and hear him talk about her, as if nothing had 
happened. There are times when I could almost rush out of 
the room. I can’t bear it. It’s awful.” 

“And for whose sake are you bearing it?” Mrs. Lattimer 
demanded. “Why, Guy’s, of course. It’s all done for Guy’s 
sake. Try and see the bright side of things. It will all 
come right; it will every bit of it come right in the end.” 


260 


The Tree of the Garden 


3 

By the time he had lunched in the mouldy coffee room of 
Dimmlesea’s one possible hotel, the purpose that had brought 
him grew fantastic to Barnard Lattimer as some half-remem¬ 
bered fairy tale. The flavour of his cigar; the uplifting strength 
of the salt air that lapped like waves through the open window; 
the sense of sunlight, life and animation seen without—all 
these seemed more real and cogent to his mind than the 
recollection of Mrs. Openshaw’s distress, his mother’s im¬ 
portunities, and the mission confided to him. Whinsett? Now 
where in heaven’s name was Whinsett? Somewhere up the 
coast; somewhere down the coast; somewhere north; some¬ 
where south ? He was familiar with the sound of it, with the 
written sight of it in documents—but here, on the very door¬ 
step . . . “Waiter! Whereabouts is Whinsett?” 

“It’s close on six mile, sir; going Beachington way.” 

Barnard Lattimer drove as far as Plumpton in one of 
Abram Blockley’s chaises, and Abram Blockley—propped on 
his two gnarled sticks—watched with proprietorial satisfaction 
to see him go. At Plumpton Barnard dismounted from the 
ancient vehicle—that revolved in a whole world of vibratory 
noises peculiar to itself—and turned his face towards the cliff 
for the completion of this foolish errand. Not that he was 
any devotee of walking, but on such a quest he deemed it 
wiser to come and go without exciting comment, in an at¬ 
mosphere of perfect unsuspicion favourable to composure. 

Now he traversed ground whose terrible familiarity made 
Guy Openshaw’s longing sick to think of; ground trodden 
by the boy’s untiring memory a hundred times a day. This 
crooked stile, this interrupted path—striking inland through 
the barley to avoid the sunken cliff; this field bank topped 
obliquely with a wind-slashed thorn . . . Why! they would 
have accosted Mrs. Openshaw’s heart at once; they would have 
plucked the hem of her fears; they would have whispered 
secrets to make a mother tremble. But Barnard Lattimer saw 


261 


The Tree of the Garden 

only a dreary shelving countryside that filled his measure of 
contempt the more to think that beings like Guy Openshaw 
could ever seek and find their pleasure in it. Now he threaded 
his way through the grass lane; stood upon tht Whinsett- 
Plumpton road. In which direction should he turn? There 
was a cottage on his right, with a figure looking down the 
roadway from the gate. Let him ask this figure first of all. 
What was the name he must enquire for? Hardrip! To be 
sure, Hardrip—Thursday Hardrip! And this, too, was a girl. 
As his look gathered more intently on her, she awoke to his 
proximity with a sudden start; made for one moment as if 
she would have thrust the gate from her and shirked the ordeal 
of his scrutiny. But she checked the impulse, deeming him 
(he realised) too near at hand to flee from, and occupied 
herself instead with something of profound inconsequence on 
the other side of the hedge, albeit conscious of him all the 
while, he knew. Her lowered eyes only bided their time. 
At the first sound of his voice they rose, shyly, yet expectantly, 
to acknowledge his address. 

“Can you tell me, please ... is this place Whinsett?” 

A startled look showed in the girl’s eyes at the question, but 
it died down at once, leaving her gaze listless and unmoved: 

“Aye, it is,” she said. 

“And can you tell me which is Hardrip’s farm?” 

“This is it,” she said; and the lowness of her voice betrayed 
her. 

“. . . Are you by any chance Thursday Hardrip?” 

For form’s sake he asked the question, but his certainty 
was independent of any answer that lips might give. 

“Aye . . .” she answered, after a pause, and the tone of 
her voice had dropped in correspondence with her look, almost 
to a whisper. “I’se her.” 


4 

She did not face him. She stood with half-closed, half- 
averted eyes, in the posture of one attendant on unpleasant 


262 


The Tree of the Garden 

tidings void of novelty, lending a dulled ear for the reception 
of news already hearkened to; and Barnard Lattimer looked 
at her. 

This, then, was Thursday Hardrip: the key feminine to 
Guy Openshaw’s romance—if the callow foolishness of so 
uninteresting an individual as Mrs. Openshaw’s son could 
ever be qualified with such a term. On the coincidence of thus 
being led to her his mind dwelt little. Through the first 
shallow sense of his surprise crept all at once the deeper, 
warmer astonishment awakened by the girl's beauty. Beauty? 
Yes, it was beauty—or so near to the realisation of this much- 
debated word as made no matter. His eyes, left free by her 
averted face to feed uninterrupted on her body, caressed the 
contours of her cheek; sifted the velvet thickness of her joined 
lashes; stroked the supple stem of neck, with the rhythmic 
blood-throb quickening its sleek flesh; followed the undula¬ 
tions of the girl’s form beneath the belted frock of print that 
clad it. And as he looked upon her, something exultant arose 
out of the depths of his being and joined forces with the look; 
something of the essence of his true self, insurgent and de¬ 
sirous. Beauty? What did it express or signify? What was 
the loveliness of woman but a provocation; a gauntlet thrown 
down to taunt and challenge man. Those who saw or tried to 
see virtue in a woman’s face were visionaries like Mrs. Open- 
shaw and fools like her son. Putting his mother and his sister 
out of consideration for decency’s sake, Barnard Lattimer 
flouted the thought of virtue in a woman. Women were but 
pottery of crude clay, imploring to be broken; conundrums 
propounding themselves for man’s solution, with the answer 
offered in their eyes for fear his wit might fail them. When 
he thought of Guy Openshaw and his wasted, golden oppor¬ 
tunities with this girl at Whinsett all these weeks, he was 
filled with a sudden current of disgust. Nay, to be sure, 
jealousy it was not. He would not stoop to harbour jealousy 
towards one so undeserving of it. And yet there lurked an 
indisputable tincture of the quality in his contempt. Guy 


The Tree of the Garden 263 

Openshaw had known this girl; walked with her; wooed her 
after his fashion; put lips to her and kissed her, in all likeli¬ 
hood ; kissed her with absurd correctness and respect; had 
promised her marriage. Why had he promised her marriage? 
Because he had kissed her . . . Because he had failed to kiss 
her? 

Or had the girl’s warmer nature called imperiously to his? 
Had she drawn him down into that whirlpool of the passions 
so deep that to the boy’s tormented conscience now wedlock 
seemed the only way of expiation? What had transpired be¬ 
tween these two, in short? How much? How little? Too 
little, he would say—led by his prejudicial knowledge of Guy 
Openshaw. 

But looking on the girl . . . opinion wavered. The voluptu¬ 
ous thickness of her lashes, veiling who knows what secret 
fires, the indrawn sensitivity of nostril for ardent breathings, 
bespoke a nature deeply, frankly sexual. A creature such 
as this, filled with the ardour and incense of her own desires, 
would need no tedious ritual of the sentiment to reach her. 
Her flesh would answer to the summons like ripe fruit; she 
would melt superbly in the mouth of supplication. Here was 
no niggard dispenser of favours, haggling the price of each like 
hucksters in a market; where the flesh dictated, she would 
give all—all in one supreme bestowal. That much he knew. 
That much Barnard Lattimer, the lawyer, knew. And the 
knowledge broke out in him disturbingly, like a current of 
hot air. Something of what Guy Openshaw experienced on 
the night that George Hardrip’s lass first challenged him 
beside his crackling kinnel-fire; something set in motion and 
communicated by the girl’s own flesh and blood crept through 
him. But unlike Guy Openshaw, he was not at a loss to 
understand the nature of the subtle force that thrilled his 
body with weakness and warmth. And all at once, Dimmlesea, 
its paltry gallantries and possibilities, shrank into the infinite— 
a mean place of ignoble pleasure. The one supreme reality of 


264 The Tree of the Garden 

his fantastic journey was concentrated, for him, in this girl's 
face. 

Now the time of his looking on her, with all the thoughts 
involved in it, lasted no longer than a moment or two. But 
words need to be unfolded one by one, and the senses are at 
liberty to cry their meaning in a chorus, as flowers breathe 
their fragrance all together. To George Hardrip’s lass the 
pause was scarcely noticeable. She knew he looked at her. 
For that reason she held away her head. And she knew why 
he looked at her. He was taking covert stock. He was saying 
to himself: “So this is Thursday Hardrip, is it! This is her 
that thought herself good enough to go sweethearting with a 
Gentleman!” Nay, she didn’t mind a deal what he thought; 
what anybody thought aboot her noo. It didn’t mek much 
difference tiv her. She could milk and ken (churn) and drive 
ti Dimmlesea just same. 

“I should like to speak with you,” she heard the stranger 
say, “Privately, of course,” he added, for she answered “Aye,” 
as though giving him permission to address her where he stood, 
beyond the gate. “Is there any place where we can talk 
undisturbed for a few minutes?” The query pierced her 
trouble with a sense of vague concern. What sort of a place, 
indeed, would meet the needs of such a visitor? In the country 
all places that were out of earshot might be deemed private 
enough. At one moment she turned towards the cottage as if 
she would have led the way indoors; the next she bethought 
herself of the cowshed, that had been her sanctuary for all 
secrets of the lip and eye in happier, bygone days; but that 
was no place of privacy for such a gentleman as this. Help¬ 
lessness showed in her troubled looks and undecided gestures. 

“Fse going ti fetch coos up,” she said at length, with an 
effort. “It’s aboot time. If you care to gan wi’ me . . . 
They’re nobbut up grass lane.” 

Barnard Lattimer concurred: “By all means,” and she 
stepped out into the road with him. He perceived for the 
first time the shortness of her outworn frock and the shape- 


The Tree of the Garden 265 

liness of limb that intervened between its hem and the cobbled 
bluntness of her shoes. The coarseness of her hose offended 
him; such contours deserved a more fastidious fitting; but 
she walked well, with a swing of hip and balance of body 
he liked to see. She bore her head as if a water-vase were 
poised on it, and when she raised her hand to touch the coils 
of hair about her neck, he saw blue veins in the lifted fore¬ 
arm’s milk-white flesh. But she kept her distance from him 
as though regardful of the much that lay between them, and 
for awhile no word fell from either lip. Each was sensible 
of the momentous burden borne on the shoulders of silence, 
that trivial words or shallow phrases would have mocked. 
Not until they had walked some paces down the grass lane 
did the girl suddenly break silence. 

“What made ye come?” she asked abruptly, turning her 
face upon him for the briefest space. “Did he send ye?” 

“Who else should send me?” 

She took his quibble without demur or doubt. “I thought 
he had,” she said. The unquestioning docility of her intelli¬ 
gence gave Barnard Lattimer the measure of the mind he 
had to deal with, and moved him to despise it. This creature 
would credit anything; her composition was but flesh and 
blood and passion. Impulse led her; she had no reasoning 
parts to be afraid of. “Has he told ye?” she asked in a prosaic 
voice; and Barnard answered: “Everything.” She did not 
question how, or why, or when, or where. On her side of the 
interceptive curtain whose thick folds fell between them, 
everything showed so staring plain as to leave no scope for 
doubt. She had forseen this moment scores of times; count¬ 
less generations of her fears had preached its coming; had 
bidden her prepare for it. All fitted like locks and keys. Why 
should scepticism dispute what common-sense affirmed ? She 
had been prepared for this dark hour as the faithful are for 
death . . . but it was bitter, all the same. A voice within 
her cried: “I’se glad it’s come at last. It had to come. 


266 


The Tree of the Garden 

Noo it’s come, maybe I can bide it better.” And yet her hopes 
felt the anguish of their dissolution. 

“Why couldn’t he ’a come his-self?” she asked, out of the 
fulness of her heart; speaking always to the green space ahead 
of her—as though fate dwelt in that, and not in the figure 
by her side. “. . . Or wrote to me? Why couldn’t he ’a 
wrote to me? He promised he would.” 

That Guy Openshaw lay propped in bed, and that the 
letter he had written to her reposed in the safety of his 
mother’s keeping, formed no part of what Barnard Lattimer 
had come to tell this girl. 

“There were reasons ...” he answered simply, merging 
her question in a vague suggestiveness. 

“His mother?” she enquired instantly; and he conceded 
“For one thing.” 

“He got her telt, then!” the girl reflected, and drew her 
lips together as if the thing divulged had hurt them. “I knew 
how it would be. I asked him not to. I said she’d never 
gi’e way tiv it. It didn’t stand ti sense she should.” 

The tone and voice in which she spoke her thoughts and 
the accompanying look of dull submission on the girl’s face 
passed not very clearly through Barnard Lattimer’s under¬ 
standing. If anything, he was disposed to think she spoke on 
the contemptuous side of anger; on the side where wrath 
chills off to a fine disgust. He took her words to imply scorn 
of the folly that confides such secrets of the senses to a mother ; 
as if, in fact, her heart arraigned Guy Openshaw’s stupidity. 
But the girl was strange to him, and her face difficult to read. 
It might even be she had no thoughts at all. Something in her 
curious impassivity of countenance reflected the stolid com¬ 
posure of the countryside, whose contentment comes of sheer 
unthinking. Her face wore something of the expressionless 
flatness of fields, untrodden by aught save animal emotions. 
There was the deep, mild, acquiescent look of dumb beasts 
in her large eyes; the gaze of painless resignation to decrees 
not understood; a soul, staring wide-eyed out of its pathetic 


The Tree of the Garden 267 

helplessness and solitude. By now they were come to the 
pasture where her cows fed. Without speaking, betrayed by 
no expression on her face to tell she gave a further thought 
to the subject at issue between them, she loosed the clumsy yat- 
band (gate-band) from the stoup (post), flung back the gate, 
and called upon her cows. 


5 

From the far end of the field they raised their great horned 
heads at the familiar cadence. “Coosh: Coosh! Coosh! 
Coosh!” that floated out to them from the girl’s lips. Then, 
one by one, they drew deliberately across the field towards her, 
rolling to the undulation of land and grip with the slow majesty 
of ships upon a sea. At the gate they paused, drawing scent 
of the stranger through out-thrust, dew-wet muzzles; blowing 
apprehensive gusts of grassy breath at him and staring at his 
unaccustomed figure with startled eyes. Guy Openshaw they 
knew (their cocked horns and snuffling nostrils and glaring 
eyeballs seemed to say) ; but -who was this stranger of the un¬ 
familiar mien and smell, who stood apart like one unused to 
cows and country, and watched their hesitations with an un¬ 
assuring face. 

“Coosh, coosh! Come on wi’ ye then!” the girl’s voice 
coaxed. “Polly! What’s matther wi’ ye! Dean’t act so 
fond. There’s naught to fear.” 

The assurance of her well known voice prevailed. Dipping 
their horns and accelerating their flanks, they swerved cum- 
bersomely through the gate, one after the other, until the last 
had passed her, encouraged by the suave flatness of her hand 
upon its body, and trod their way down the lane on yielding 
two-split hoofs that sank into the green turf without a sound. 
She made no attempt to follow, but laid her arm along the 
gate-rail and lowered her chin upon it, staring into space. 

“What is it you want to tell me?” she asked, and since 
Barnard Lattimer did not answer instantly, added almost in 
the same breath: “I know wi’oot being telt. He’s done wi’ me.” 


268 


The Tree of the Garden 

For such candour as this her visitor had come altogether un¬ 
prepared ; and far was he from possession of the least ability to 
interpret it. Had Mrs. Openshaw but heard the tone of un¬ 
accusing bitterness in this young girl’s voice, it would have 
stabbed her conscience to compunction; her heart would have 
been rent with the sound of it. And not the accents of the 
voice alone, but the hardwrung look of suffering in the girl’s 
face; the posture of despair in the girl’s extended arm; the soul¬ 
less chin reposed on it; the eyes staring into an infinity devoid 
of faith. Oh, how conscience would have cried: “She cared 
for him! She cared for Guy! She loved my boy. I feel as¬ 
sured of it. I know it!” Compassion would have trembled; 
remorse would have yearned to fling out both its arms. But 
she had been wise in sending Barnard Lattimer to defend her 
from such spiritual weakness, for even the frailest can be firm 
by proxy. Barnard had been trained to disregard emotions— 
those very qualities that Mrs. Openshaw was prey to—to sus¬ 
pect the bona fides of every feeling professing to be fine, or 
pure, or lofty. All that Barnard Lattimer read in the girl’s 
speech and posture was insensibility to feeling. She knew 
already what had brought him all this way from Beatonthorpe. 
His coming caused her no surprise. Common-sense had broken 
the news to her already. She said so; she was prepared, in¬ 
different. To this extent his tongue was spared much explana¬ 
tion. And perhaps at heart—who knows!—she had no great 
affection for Guy Openshaw. Perhaps at heart—who knows! 
—she scorned him; despised the weakness of his nature; was 
tired already of a love in leading-strings that offered her noth¬ 
ing but bloodless adoration. This latter thought, for some 
inexplicable reason, cheered Barnard Lattimer like a cordial. 
Yes, sank down into his bosom and impregnated it with fortify¬ 
ing warmth and comfort. Perhaps all this while she had 
despised a passion tied to the impossible; mocked the polite and 
useless offerings of love the boy had made to her; mere baubles 
for children to play with, not burning emblems of exchange for 
beings of flesh and blood. 


The Tree of the Garden 269 

Did Barnard Lattimer err in this conviction? Not alto¬ 
gether. If he construed amiss the girl’s emotions, it was be¬ 
cause she falsified their text deliberately to impose on his credu¬ 
lity and her own. For it is the nature of wounded feelings, 
like stricken brutes, to defend themselves with tooth and claw; 
to belie the gaping hurts that drain their strength until death 
betrays the mockery of striving and unmasks imposture. And 
this granddaughter of old George Hardrip was but a lass, 
armed with a little unsophisticated cunning for the defence of 
her feelings; a thin protective tissue of deception that formed 
her sole armament against the world. Before this stranger, at 
least, her pride should not confess its hurt. She would expose 
no softness of her heart to shame so that this spy upon her 
feelings might return to him and say: “She wept. She laid her 
head between her hands. The tears ran down her cheek. She 
could not utter a word.” Nay, that he should not say of her: 
she would confide to none the satisfaction of her suffering. 
Let, rather, her thoughts be hardened with hatred; let her 
think ill of them that acted ill towards her; flout the scorn 
that scorned her; deny the sickness of despair; contend, if need 
arose, “What’s it to me! I never cared for him.” Let her 
heart be adamant, at least, until this messenger was gone . . . 
and then, what matter! 

Out of this bitter fulness of her thinking a curious web 
seemed woven, whose palpable processes spun out into the air 
about her and enveloped both figures in a skein of silence hard 
to disentangle. With her arms still laid upon the topmost 
gate-rail and her chin supported on it, she stared across the 
pasture in an attitude of such finality as to suggest that speech 
lacked any further office to fulfill. All that was to say be¬ 
tween them had been said. She knew the object of his com¬ 
ing; she had foreseen this end to things. It was inevitable. It 
caused her neither astonishment nor sorrow. What was the 
use (her posture seemed to say) in going on milking when the 
pail was full ? 

Nor did this attitude of complete submission cause speech 


270 


The Tree of the Garden 

to come more readily to Barnard Lattimer. If she had shown 
resentment, indignation at his visit; if she had questioned that 
or him; sought the meaning of Guy Openshaw’s inexplicable 
change of heart towards her—if she had given Barnard Latti¬ 
mer any weight of argument to counter or stream of words to 
stem, such resistance might have helped him. But this dead 
calm spirit of acceptance left him, too, with no words to utter; 
his thoughts no more rose in this unruffled air than a kite can 
climb into a windless sky. A phrase or two came from his 
lips, but nothing (to be sure) essential. Only tentative ut¬ 
terances thrown out to try and catch what wind there might 
be; to find in what direction the girl’s thoughts blew. That, 
to be sure, was not the only feature of his silence; it had 
another side. For as the girl’s own silence seemed indifferent 
to a fate foreseen, so, partaking of the mind’s indifference to 
outer things, her passive body endured his scrutiny without 
resistance or defence. And little by little, as he looked upon 
her, noticing with appreciative eye the outlines of a form so 
nonchalantly divulged; appraising the points of excellence 
confessed; assessing the value of those hidden—little by little 
a warmer current crept into his blood, thawing its icy crust 
and melting its artificial frigor to the fluidity of mere man. 

For now, from his secret heart, the lawyer was fast de¬ 
parting. All that remained of him was an attentuated vestige 
whose craft might prove of value in another’s cause. Of what 
use could be a lawyer to Mrs. Openshaw now that her suit 
was undefended? He had no quarrel with this girl, nor she 
with him. He was but the impartial medium of other people’s 
wills, doing their service without animosity. 

“I’m afraid . . .” he ventured to remark at last, “y° u will 
be disposed to hate me!” For now that the law’s frigidities 
were dissolved and he was at liberty to stand remoter from 
the inculpating cause he served, speech came more freely. 
Something of the warmth of the human current quickening his 
blood pervaded his words. There sounded a convincing kind- 


The Tree of the Garden 271 

ness in his voice. The tone protested friendship like a proffered 
hand. 

“Hate you?” the girl enquired—without, however, looking 
at him, although her senses registered the kindlier accent in 
his voice. “What for?” 

“Because of my errand.” 

She protested, in a low voice: “Not me.” 

“It’s not exactly an errand I care for,” Barnard Lattimer 

% 

confessed. “In fact ... I refused first of all. I only con¬ 
sented to come to Whinsett after some persuasion . . . because 
—” He stopped at that, confronting alternatives. 

“Because he asked ye?” the girl supplied, with more promp¬ 
titude than he had expected from her, and he accepted the 
suggestion. It seemed a polite and friendly thing to do. It 
made for a better understanding between them. 

“Yes . . . because he asked me,” he answered, making use 
of her own words. 

“What made him ask ye? Are you friends?” the girl en¬ 
quired after a moment, and when he had replied in the 
affirmative: “Do you live i’ same place as him?” she asked. 
‘T Beatonthorpe ?” Yes, he lived in Beatonthorpe. “Gain- 
hand him?” she asked; and he answered: “Not very far away.” 

Come! this was promiseful. Through the one-paned win¬ 
dow of enquiry the hidden self began to show its countenance 
at last. It deigned even to look at him; not soullessly, as if he 
were a being indifferent and suspect, but with a surreptitious 
interest that sought to evaluate the human element in him; 
to decide for satisfaction’s sake, what sort of earthly messenger 
was this. Once or twice their looks made trial of each other, 
and into the depths of the girl’s unguarded eye he slipped a 
softened glance of friendly reassurance. No longer did she 
stand with chin on forearm, staring across the pasture. Her 
attitude had veered towards him now, as if in response to a 
friendly breeze. He saw fresh possibilities in her lissome form; 
fresh beauties in her face awaiting birth; animation, long 
suspended, drew visibly nearer to her lips and eyes; much of 


272 The Tree of the Garden 

the hardness of the mouth was gone ; disturbing qualities called 
to him out of the level accents of her voice, whose curious 
flatness lay suffused with promise like some low horizon before 
the dawn. 


6 

But all at once she raised her head with a quick motion of 
alarm, as if awakened rudely to the summons of a material 
world too long ignored. 

“Thosdy!” 

The sound that had first disturbed her renewed itself at 
close range. “Aye,” she responded in a voice of sudden shame 
and culpability, divorcing herself from the gate. “It’s my 
grandfeythur,” she explained to Barnard Lattimer in a troubled 
undertone. “I’se been forgetting coos. Don’t say aught tiv 
him about what’s brought ye!” 

By this time the bleary visage of George Hardrip peered 
up the lane, blazing with incredulity and wrath at sight of her. 

“God bon it!” the old man cried. “Yon chap’s come back 
again. I’d hoped he was deead! Thoo’ll be mummling an’ 
milkin’ i’ cooshade all day.” 

He saw then, dashing the obstructive water from his eyes, 
that this was not Guy Openshaw on whom his anger rested, 

but another, strange to him; and the knowledge—though it 

# 

checked the course of his invective—lent, or seemed to lend, a 
fresh impulse to wrath. “What!” he cried. “Thoo’s gotten 
another yan already? Do’st hear me? Set him aboot his 
business an’ get thy ways i’ cooshade.” Doubtless his anger 
drew the larger part of courage from imperfect vision. He 
railed more freely because he could not clearly see with whom 
his indignation had affair; throwing his words into the void 
with such courage as dogs fling challenge in the night to con¬ 
fidently distant foes, heedless of respective strength or stature. 
But there was another thing, too, in the old man’s foggy 
anger. The moment Guy Openshaw was gone, his grand¬ 
daughter had grown strangely docile; she had reverted to her 


273 


The Tree of the Garden 

old long-suffering self; a patient beast of burden for abuse to 
cudgel. And just when he had regained possession of the 
girl’s obedience; had her mute and abject as a dog beneath 
the heel of his reproaches, now was come another to contest 
his rule. His anger was the snarling jealousy of an old and 
cankered cur that has no fighting teeth, but only futile hatred 
left to bark with. 

On Barnard Lattimer the unexpected apparition of George 
Hardrip and the invective hurled by his loose mouth and 
wrathful arms had a curdling effect. Guy Openshaw had 
experienced something of the same emotions, but Guy Open¬ 
shaw was but a boy, embarrassed still with youthful diffidence 
and a certain consideration for all—even the least regenerate—- 
old age. He had no established dignity to clamour for its 
dues. The flame of quick resentment flashed in Barnard Lat- 
timer’s eyes; his cheeks went hot; next moment he would 
have spoken, but the girl touched his sleeve dissuasively with 
a hand. “Nay, don’t say naught tiv him, please. It’ll nobbut 
mek things worse. I’d best gan noo, not ti vex him. When 
can I see ye again? After I’se gotten milked and tea-things 
cleared? He’ll be gone then. I can? Where can I? Here? 
I’ grass lane? At six o’clock?” She pressed her questions on 
him hurriedly, with a voice and face of supplication. The dull 
passivity of her countenance was wrought all at once to a 
pitch of animation unrevealed before, as if the boon besought 
were of the vitalmost concern to her. “You will?” She 
clutched at his assent with curious avidity. “You promise? 
Here. I’ grass lane. At six o’clock. Nay, best say half-past 
to be sure. But I shall be stood here waiting of ye before 
then . . .” 

“I shall be here too,” Barnard Lattimer assured her. 

“Do ye mean it? Faithful?” 

“Yes. Faithful.” She was on tip-toe to be gone. “Just 
one thing . . .” he asked her. 

“Aye ... Be quick!” For the figure of George Hardrip, 


■274 The Tree of the Garden 

that had been withdrawing down the lane, stopped ominously 
again, and his bleared face showed above his shoulder. 

“Can you tell me where I shall be able to get some tea?” 

Even at a time so critical as this, so fraught with possi¬ 
bilities, he could forsake the infinite and descend to practical, 
essential things. For he stood at the cross-roads to heaven 
knows what, and purpose must be fed. 

7 

He had his tea at Plumpton, that being the best suggestion 
George Hardrip’s lass could make under the circumstances. 

. . Only he hadn’t been at wum,” she said (and her 
listener thought, wistfully), “I’d a’gi’en ye tea i’ kitchen, if 
you’d cared.” She mentioned Suddaby’s with dubiety. They 
might—nobbut he said whose friend he was. Albeit she quickly 
added the entreaty: “Don’t tell ’em what he’s sent ye here for, 
if you go there.” But Barnard Lattimer had no greater desire 
to divulge his presence to the Suddabys than she to send him. 
He walked by preference to Plumpton, and ordered tea at the 
Plumpton Arms. 

In its little upstairs parlour, musty as an ancient Bible whose 
pages are only at long intervals disturbed by fingers of the 
curious, he sat down to his meal. By this time the lawyer in 
him was almost gone. The pusillanimous absurdity of his 
pilgrimage to Whinsett was merged and swept away in a 
vibratory current of adventure. Dimmlesea and the careworn 
waiter in his threadbare blacks were faded to insubstantial 
figments, like memories recalled laboriously from yester-year. 
More than these things, distilled into his consciousness like a 
deadly drop from passion’s philtre, was the memory of George 
Hardrip’s lass. 

If the law had only been a woman, Barnard Lattimer 
might have attained some eminence in his profession, for he 
approached most nearly to a lawyer in his dealings with 
the sex, never suffering sentiment to mislead discretion, or 
sympathy to grow too honest for the pleader’s word, or letting 


275 


The Tree of the Garden 

passion run away from practice. His smiles seemed never so 
sincere as when they served a purpose, nor his voice so naturally 
kind as when he cloaked it for an end; and he could produce, 
at call, so plausible a counterfeit of the sympathies as to make 
the genuine article look worthless by comparison. As for Mrs. 
Openshaw and her son, he relegated all thought of them 
to the background of his mind; pigeon-holed them both for 
future reference with preciseness and detachment. That the 
thing he contemplated was a crime against the mother’s faith, 
the son’s helplessness, deterred him not at all. Such a con¬ 
sideration, even assuming it had weight, pertained to quite a 
different order of thought and action. 

Besides . . . Yes; there was another point of view; another 
argument to be considered. What manner of girl was really 
this who had inspired Guy Openshaw’s infatuation? It was a 
question Mrs. Openshaw would surely look to him to answer. 
She would say: “You have seen her? Tell me: what is she 
like?’’ He had his opinion, to be sure; but that opinion lacked 
value, lacking proof. Well, he intended to put that opinion 
to the proof. If the girl realised his expectation she justified 
his trial of her. If she disappointed him . . . He smiled. 
“Leave everything to Barnard. Barnard is a lawyer. Barnard 
understands such things.” 

He drank the last remaining drop of tea, took up his hat, 
trod down the steep and creaking staircase to where the naked 
odours of drawn beer lolled inert about the passageway, and the 
foot crunched upon sanded tiles, paid his bill and went. 
Already desires began to importune for a sight of George 
Hardrip’s lass once more. External nature, when it left the 
confines of the body feminine, had no attractions for Barnard 
Lattimer. He never noted skies or landscapes, or sought to 
distil into an essence for the soul’s disquiet or consolation the 
components of outer life so closely, curiously impinging on his 
own. He never sought to merge himself in the immensities 
of external splendour, or to draw all these into his identity; 
to gratify the glowing illusion of being part of them; to feel 


276 The Tree of the Garden 

that they depended on his sight and sympathy for realisation; 
that he, without them, was but a spot of consciousness writhing 
dimly in the dark. Why should he? He was Barnard Lat- 
timer of Beatonthorpe, owing no indebtedness to trees and 
sunlight, to birds and beasts and the secrets breathed by 
hedge and flower. Nevertheless, in his own imperfect, super¬ 
ficial and superior way, he noted that the deepened sun was 
heading for the west, flinging longer shadows; that cornfields 
here and there shone almost red; that the sea was now grown 
deeply blue; that something impalpable—either mist or powder 
—hung suspended in the breezeless air. He cast glances of 
condescension—half compassionate—on the world he walked 
through; an endless stretch of dreary fields, spread out like 
patchwork counterpanes to catch the sun’s warmth. A world 
destitute of human interest. Only here and there the isolated 
shirts and hats of distant workers, monotonously toiling on 
the land, revealed themselves to the persevering eye. Lord! 
What a place to dwell in; to have to spend one’s days ini 

8 

She stood by the gate awaiting him. The sight of her 
sent a thrill of reassurance through his blood. She was there. 
She had kept her word. He had never doubted her promise. 
He had all the while been sure of her. 

. . . And as he drew near there was another thing his 
exultation noted. George Hardrip’s lass had dressed herself 
with care for this encounter. It was a good omen; it showed 
a vanity alive, and the vanity of woman (as Barnard Lattimer 
knew well) is man’s most valuable ally; her own inveterate 
foe. Yes, it was a tribute to her thought of him. She valued 
his opinion; she sought to show well in his eyes; to win some¬ 
thing of his admiration; to obliterate the memory of this 
afternoon’s deshabille, of the faded gown and coarse shoes, 
and substitute instead a picture more deserving of his praise 
and recollection; more apt to reach his favour. 

Th is girl knew the power of her own beauty, he felt assured. 




2 77 


The Tree of the Garden 

She had put it to the test before; she glowed in the exercise 
of it. She had come equipped to test the strength of his 
resistance; to take the measure of his weakness. 

So argued Barnard Lattimer, furnished with ample pre¬ 
cedents for the conclusion, drawn from a full past. It is 
true that he read the sex from one text only, and that corrupt ; 
but the version offered satisfaction to his needs, and experience 
had proved it accurate enough for all practical purposes. He 
who systematically seeks the lower things in life is more apt 
to be rewarded than the prosecutor of a nobler search. 

. . . For Barnard Lattimer’s conclusions were not entirely 
at fault about this girl, albeit they did not pierce into every 
secret cavity of her nature. The voice of vanity bade George 
Hardrip’s lass put on this finer raiment, but the vanity itself 
was prompted by a bruised and wounded pride of sex; a ruse 
to hide defeat rather than a call to arms. She wanted this 
stranger to see her as she really was. Not as he had found 
her the first time; as he would find her all the days of the 
week—but as she was on Sundays. Her real self. The self 
that showed the standard of her self-esteem. The self she 
clung to in dark moments for comfort and respectability. She 
would not have this messenger go back and say of her: “She’d 
gotten an aud print frock on, wi’ a pair of cobbled aud boots, 
and her haid nobbut twisted up intiv her neck.” Nay; she 
wouldn’t gi’e him chance to say that. In some sort his eyes 
had the force of that other one’s eyes; each time she summoned 
courage to look into them it was as if she met Guy Open- 
shaw’s enquiring gaze; probing her keenly; seeking for his 
selfish satisfaction to know: “How does she feel it? How 
does she tek things?” 

And then ... Yes! for never yet was any woman reduced 
to one single reason for an act. One alone would be un¬ 
worthy of her; insufficient for her complex nature’s need. 
Two reasons at least must stand sponsors for all she says and 
does; to give the doing or the saying cogency; to make it 
valid to herself. Something within her, something of heart or 


278 The Tree of the Garden 

head, or pride or weakness, cleaved to this stranger. He was 
the last link with her old dead life; with hope; with Beaton- 
thorpe; with Guy Openshaw. Not later than this very morn¬ 
ing, maybe, he’d looked into the eyes she’d craved for, and 
touched the very hand that the lips of her humility would 
have been content for chance to lick like a dog; and listened 
to the voice ... to the voice she’d gi’e all she had, or was 
ever like to have, to hear again. While he stood by her, 
while he stayed i’ Whinsett, she seemed to hold grim Destiny 
by the gown; to stop the ongoing feet of time; to hinder things 
from happening. Moment he took his leave, all would be 
owered wi’ her. Even a tormented flame was better than no 
light, i’ dark. When that gave out, she’d be left with herself 
i’ pitchy blackness. There’d be naught no more to hope; 
naught no more to fear. Aye! even fear was summut to 
keep the heart alive; to gi’e life summut ti live for. Wi’ hopes 
dead, and fears dead, there’d be naught but days and nights, 
yan after another—yan like another—wi’oot end. Dibner 
Suddaby or Postman, or someone else—her fatalistic mind 
looked already to the future, void of interest or fear. Which 
would it be? Nay, she didn’t care a deal noo, which it was. 
Maybe first that wanted her. Who else was there ti keep 
hersen for? 


9 

“You’ve come then . . .” she said to Barnard Lattimer, 
lifting a look to him from under her heavy lashes as he drew 
near. No smile relieved the monotony of her mouth; there 
was no tone of interest or welcome in her voice; nothing in 
her looks or posture to recall the urgency of her last appeal. In 
this respect her greeting proved a disappointment; it belied the 
promise of the girl’s attire. And a sudden sharp suspicion 
stabbed the man’s assurance. Did this careful toilet pay com¬ 
pliment, in truth, to him—or to some other and more favoured, 
yet to come? The mere thought gave a nasty jar to confidence, 
but nothing of disconcertment showed. On the contrary it 


279 


The Tree of the Garden 

put a brighter smile on his words. And he raised his hat. 
This afternoon he had not raised his hat—deeming, perhaps, 
the salutation superfluous to a print frock and worsted stock¬ 
ings. But lisle thread and patent leather toecaps compelled 
the homage. Her flattered vanity recorded that, just as its 
humbler self had noted the omission of the courtesy before. 
For the Other One had never failed to greet her so. It had 
formed part of her triumph and embarrassment at first. She 
found the usage hard to reconcile with life’s acceptance of 
her. Pride snatched at it, indeed; but shame paid for it. 
At the cowshed, by the pig-stye door with the slap-bucket 
in her hand; weekdays or Sundays—that was always how the 
Other One saluted her. She said to him: “Why div ye lift 
your hat? Ti me! Neabody else i’ Whinsett diz.” But it 
made no difference. He was a gentleman. It was his way. 
She grew to like it. Aye, her mother used to tell her it was a 
bad thing when lasses grew fond o’ folk and things aboon 
(above) ’em. 

And now his friend—that had looked so scornful at her 
first of all this afternoon. . . . He did same. It brought the 
Other One back to her. Nobbut it had been him! She could 
shiver for thought on it. So, little by little, with effort and 
awkwardness, they dropped into conversation. For what was 
there to say? What could he say to her or she to him? She 
could only cling to the unalterable with words; keep him to 
her for no purpose, by dint of talking. 

“Did ye get your tea at Plumpton? . . . Ye did? . . . 
At Plumpton Public? . . . Shall ye be going back ti Beaton- 
thorpe i’ morning?” And as they spoke together, as words 
passed into the void between them like the unreal conversation 
drifting out of dreams, all at once they began to walk. At 
whose suggestion the girl knew not. Perhaps her own. Per¬ 
haps herself suggested it: “Shall we walk a bit o’ ways doon 
lane?” Very like she did. Either him or her, at least. They 
fitted their footsteps slowly; he on his side of the lane, non¬ 
chalantly puffing wreaths of smoke into the air in front of 


280 


The Tree of the Garden 

him; she on hers, touching the hawthorn leaves and hedge 
campion for companionship as she passed by. What was it 
they talked about? Not the things they sought to talk about, 
be sure! Nay, that she knew. They set up words like a 
fence betwixt them, like sharp netting to keep their true 
thoughts from one another. He did not tell her all he knew; 
she could not tell him all within her mind. All ? Why, there 
were a thousand things tormenting it; things she longed to 
know; burned to say, to ask. When had he seen him last? 
How was he looking? Was he vexed wi’ her? Was he sorry? 
Why couldn’t he ’a come his-self ? Was he frightened on her? 
Would his friend persuade him to come? Aye, do! Just ti 
come once for her sake and say good-bye. She wouldn’t try 
and keep him. (His friend must be sure and tell him that.) 
She wouldn’t cry or beg of him. Nobbut he’d just come as far 
as Dimmlesea and speak wi’ her ootside station, and tek leave 
of her friendly. She wouldn’t ask for naught ni more. Nay! 
nobbut he’d just write tiv her wi’ his own hand and tell her 
he wasn’t vexed; tell her he’d think of her noo and then; 
not oft, but ivvry like. It’s a thing he’d promised. He’d 
a right to keep his promise . . . Would his friend try and 
persuade him to keep his promise? 

God! Not till now had she realised the full servility of 
her love; the true abjectness of love’s nature. If intercession 
could have served, there was no depth of intercession to which 
desires would ever have refused to stoop. They would have 
flung themselves all prostrate at the feet of this stranger ; 
clasped his knees; implored; besought him; clung to him like a 
very Saviour. And all the while, above this blind insurgence of 
a love that had no shame nor pride, the protesting part of her 
dissembled. Aye! did its uttermost to trick the two of them. 
Now they were talking about him no longer. Somehow in 
walking, the conversation had slipped awry, like a quilt from 
the limbs of a sleeper dimly conscious of its loss, yet powerless 
to recover the object necessary to warmth and comfort. They 
were talking about the sea, about Dimmlesea, about herself. 


The Tree of the Garden 281 

About the life she led. What time she got up of a morning 
(for instance). What time she went to bed of a night. 
What she did all day. He asked her question after question, 
filled (it seemed) with interest in all she had to tell him. 
Aye, she must do her best to please him, the cunning self 
within her said. She must try and mek friends wi’ him whilst 
she’d chance; then, mayhap, she’d be fierce (bold) enough to 
ask questions of him an’ all, when time came. Already they’d 
left lane; they were walking on cliff top. Sun was setting 
fast, spinning like a gurt red ball i thorn hedge. Dew’d 
begun to fall; grass felt caud and wet. Yon was light fro’ 
Dimmlesea, look ye! flashing fair inti one’s eyes fit to blind 
a body. Spraith wouldn’t be long after—Aye, there, see-ye! 
just as words came out of her mouth. Days had gotten started 
to tek off noo; night soon fell; stars was sparkling already 
. . . God help her! If only it had been the Other One that 
walked beside her now! 

Did she shiver at length? Say to her companion in a 
weakened voice: “Let’s gan . . .” Why, she may have done 
or not. Herself scarce knew the difference between things 
thought and uttered. At one moment she woke to guilty 
consciousness with a start as if words had escaped her; at 
another she would repose so implicitly on thought as to mistake 
its substantiality for utterance, and deem her silence to be 
the answer given. But all at once they were walking slowly 
homeward again. The deepening night-tide seemed to draw 
them curiously closer, like all the rest of shadows. Where 
space had kept at first its regulated width between them their 
shoulders rubbed and chafed at whiles in the deceptive light. 
And suddenly his hand was on her arm. Nay, it came as no 
surprise to her; her senses had been half expectant of it these 
many moments past. From time to time it had touched her 
lightly as they walked, as if to aid direction, to stay and steady 
her protectively. Now it dwelt; the warmth of it thickened 
like a clot of blood on consciousness; the hand and the area 
subdued by it seemed as if they grew enormously in magnitude; 


282 


The Tree of the Garden 

a| wall of deadliness rose up insistent between herself and 
thoughts, like clouds that overspread the face of the sun and 
mask it with their vapour. At first—yes, to be sure—at first 
she felt a sudden shudder of revulsion. Something within 
her shocked self shouted loud warning through all the thor¬ 
oughfares of consciousness; her terror had the impulse to 
fling the taintful hand aside. Aye! fling the loathsome thing 
back to where it came from, crying: “Is this what he sent 
ye ti Whinsett for? Get yoursen oot o’ road, quick. I’ll ha’ 
naught ti do wi’ syke as you.” But passion sank down inert 
into the depths of realisation, like a half-drowned body whose 
dying struggles lift it high above the waves, only to subside 
the deeper beneath their suffocative flood. What good would 
struggling do? It was all owered wi’ him. He’d done wi’ 
her. She owed him naught ni longer. She’d been his yance; 
he mud ’a had her if he would; done what he liked wi’ her. 
Noo he’d tossed her aside for Dibner Suddaby, for Postman, 
for anybody. Little cared he what she did wi’ hersen; which 
on ’em got her. Nay! let hand stop where it was. It showed 
there was somebody thought summut aboot her still. Her 
recovered senses gathered round the point of contact, seeking 
to collect perverse comfort from the warmth of it, to constitute 
it a place of refuge from the endless importunities of mind. 
For though the hand was the hand of a stranger, her senses 
wilfully endowed it with the sweetness and wonder of the 
Other One; whispering through her body: “Nobbut it had 
been him come back! Nobbut he’d ta’en hold o’ me same 
road!” So, between these two deceptions of the past and 
present her senses stumbled onward, part leading, part led, 
deeper and deeper into the sweet and bitter slough of dreams. 
The hand was become an arm now, into whose encircling 
scope she slid. No words passed between the two of them. 
Long since had they outstripped the need of words; those 
substantial paving-stones for thought to walk on were melted 
into a mist of sense. They swam in it, submissive to its flux, 
like dunnage drifting on the tide. And on a sudden the face 


The Tree of the Garden 283 

so long hovering above her own swooped down upon it, oblit¬ 
erating the stars. They walked no longer. They stood, 
swaying, in the wet grass. Both arms were round her now; 
his mouth was on her mouth; a mouth insuperable; a padlock; 
a burning seal, stifling the words of weak remonstrance that 
mounted automatically out of the surge and tumult of the 
girl’s emotions. For in truth she strove no longer, caught in 
the current of her own feeling. The spirit of resistance strug¬ 
gled feebly to reassert itself, protesting: “Dean’t! Let me 
be! . . .”—but these were not Guy Openshaw’s arms that held 
her, nor Guy Openshaw’s polite, spasmodic lips that sought 
her own. 

“Nay ... If only it had been him!” That was the refrain 
her senses sank and drowned to, set to the demented music 
of the steam-organ. “Nobbut it had been just him.” 

10 

Well! The night’s adventure was coming to a close. Thank 
heaven! Here was the stile; here was the lane at last, chan¬ 
nelled in ebony through high black hedges, and sprinkled all 
above with crystalline sharp stars that glittered like broken 
glass on the coping of a wall. The sea tossed short concussive 
waves at the cliff’s foot; gifts of custom devoid of grace, and 
dedicated without rhetoric. Behind their backs, from where 
the disk of giddy light rotated still, the obdurate music pur¬ 
sued them; the ghastly beam from Dimmlesea traced their 
outlines at intervals with a dead white forefinger. A heavy 
dew chilled the keen nostrils of night. Now, indeed, Barnard 
Lattimer would have been glad to exchange this evening’s expe¬ 
rience for the comfortable unromanticism of the coffee-room 
at Dimmlesea. For what had it taught him that he did not 
know; what given him that he lacked possession of already? 
It had been a soulless victory; a triumph without zest; a con¬ 
quest marred by its sheer completeness. The issue never for 
a moment hung in doubt. She merged in his desires like a 
thing decreed; the dead-weight of her acquiescence cumbered 


284 The Tree of the Garden 

him as if it had been lead; a load to stagger under; a burden 
to be borne. And then . . . worst of all, her tears. Inexplica¬ 
ble, soulless tears that bewept the loss of nothing; as though 
the gift he was allowed to take without the need for asking 
had been a something priceless and irrecoverable, wrung from 
her by force or wiled away by fraud. For awhile he had pro¬ 
fessed ignorance of her tears; but their dull persistence and the 
chill dampness of her cheek and lips, and the monotonous 
spasms of her bosom left discretion without a subterfuge to 
hide in. He was forced to take cognisance of fact at last; 
to ask her why she wept. 

“Nay . . .” the girl responded, stung by the tone of his 
enquiry into a quick resumption of her bitter self. “It’s naught. 
Tek no notice o’ me.’’ 

It was naught! However distant Barnard Lattimer might 
be from knowledge of the true nature of the girl’s tears, he 
was astute enough, at least, to seek-no nearer understanding 
of them. For a woman’s tears lie always open to suspicion. 
Only fools seek explanations of them, and the worst of a 
woman’s feelings is that, however genuine in the beginning they 
may be, they are ever ready to become impostors for a word of 
injudicious sympathy. It was naught. Well, then, since it 
was naught, let them be gone, the two of them, before naught 
found opportunity to change into something more definite and 
disconcerting. 

But for some reason best known to herself, this inexplicable 
creature displayed an obstinate disinclination to stir from where 
she was. She even turned aside from his reasonable hortation, 
as a jaded appetite might turn from meat, with the dull re¬ 
sponse: “You can gan if ye like; you’ve n’ occasion ti wait 
for me.” 

That extremity of the girl’s indifference frightened him. 
All at once there crept into this evening’s adventure an element 
of darkness and of danger; a tragic breath of instability in 
which life rocked like the blue flame of a candle, flinging 
monstrous and distorted shadows everywhere in lieu of light. 


The Tree of the Garden 285 

Before all, let him get this creature home without delay. He 
assumed a manner of authority, spoke with the sudden sharp¬ 
ness of decision. To remain here longer was impossible; she 
must return with him. His accent of determination overcame 
the weaker will. The girl made no more demur, but moved 
obedient to his mandate, like a child. Her tractability had 
the welcome freshness of spring-water, bringing to his appre¬ 
hensions an inexpressible relief. Thank heaven—a sudden 
gratitude avowed within him—the difficulty was surmounted. 
He had coped with it correctly. A strong hand, a firm will, 
had saved a situation threatening disaster. Now, in the wel¬ 
come respite afforded to his feelings, he was able to resume 
the doffed garment of gallantry; to speak and move, and touch 
this girl with the requisite solicitude and tenderness for her sex. 

. . . They stood together in the shadow of the lane end, 
at last, within sight of the girl’s home, whose roof-ridge and 
chimneys blocked out an angular space of stars; and Barnard 
Lattimer knew in his heart that by reason of a purpose unac¬ 
complished he dared not let her go. What he did not know— 
what no such man as Barnard Lattimer could ever have con¬ 
ceived—was the state of this girl’s mind. Was it indeed 
conceivable that after what had happened, after the first 
plungings into the depths of an almost bottomless despair, 
drowning hands and fingers of hope should come up to break 
the surface of these inky waters, and clutch at the impossible? 

“Shall you tell him?’’ the girl demanded all at once, with 
an insensibility that shocked her listener. 

“Tell him!’’ Barnard Lattimer repeated blankly. 

“Shall ye?” 

Of the motive underlying the question no hint was vouch¬ 
safed by its tone of utterance. But that it should be asked 
at all filled Barnard Lattimer with deep misgiving, and for 
awhile—beset by many fears—discretion had no answer. 

“Do you think . . .” he said at last, taking momentary 
refuge in a tone of outraged honour, “ . . . . that I could ever 
be capable of such a thing?” 


286 


The Tree of the Garden 

“Aye, you say so,” the girl commented apathetically. “So 
diz all men. They’re all same. They’ll promise a lass faith¬ 
ful to keep it secret, and they’ll gan straight and boast aboot 
it to their friends. Well!”—a new tone of bitter animation 
warmed her voice, as if she sought to cast from her mind the 
last vestiges of specious hope and all false thinkings. “Tell 
him! Aye. Tell him. I want ye to. I want him to know. 
He’s done wi’ me; it meks no difference tiv him what happens 
me noo. Sin’ he dizn’t want me, let them have me that diz. 
I can please mysen. Tell him. He’s a right to know.” 

All quietly again this girl was weeping. Tears of blind 
acceptance were in her voice; tears trickled, uncontested, down 
her cheeks. And for the first time, through the quickened 
medium of his own concern, Barnard Lattimer pierced the 
girl’s external self and touched the secret of her tears. Some¬ 
thing at last of the enormity of a betrayal of affection such as 
this dawned with dread upon his consciousness. His appre¬ 
hensions showed the measure of its magnitude. He had been 
bargaining with flesh and blood, counting on their weakness 
and desires; building all this while upon the animal in nature, 
and results had justified his every hypothesis till now. Now, 
above the low horizon of the flesh he beheld a sky charged 
with tumultuous emotion; he was discomfited by the vision of 
an unsuspected spirit in this fallow clay, mortifying his pride 
and menacing his safety. She cared for Guy Openshaw all 
the while. Nothing of this evening’s sort had ever passed 
between those two; of that her listener stood convinced. 
Wronged and wounded love alone had flung to him, through 
self-despite, the offering she believed rejected by Mrs. Open- 
shaw’s son. She had used him as an instrument of self¬ 
revenge. He had assisted at the crucifixion of her flesh upon 
the wrong deemed done to it. The realisation blasted his 
vanity like lightning, but it wrought more damage still in the 
vicinity of his alarms. Why! His errand here was scarcely 
5^et begun. It stretched before him now, remote as when he 
first came—only that the sun no longer shone upon it and the 


The Tree of the Garden 287 

shadows ominously lengthened. They had walked, he and 
George Hardrip’s lass, as far as the cottage gate by this time, 
and she laid her hand upon the latch. For less than nothing 
she would have taken here a listless leave of him and gone 
indoors, consigning him to the stars and silence and the solemn 
issues resting leadenly upon his shoulders. “He’s done wi* 
me ... It meks no difference tiv him what happens to me 
noo.” For her (it seemed to him) the words summarised all 
that needed to be said. She would have been content to leave 
the matter apathetically so; indifferent to fate. But for Bar¬ 
nard Lattimer, to whom things might with every confidence 
be left; who was a lawyer, and knew everything that was to 
be known about such matters; who would arrange all—such 
an inconclusive termination of the interview was unthinkable. 
Some better understanding, for his own safety, he must have 
before leaving Whinsett. Yes! He w T as fettered to the spot 
by manacles of shame and apprehension. Now, to gain a little 
time, to clear a path to purpose, he must woo like any farm¬ 
yard lover. He! Barnard Lattimer, who had obtained from 
this lass by fraud everything it was within her power to give, 
must plead for the continuance of her favours, solicit last 
caresses at this garden gate; cling to her cheek and mouth 
for kisses—with the dreary thought of the miles to Dimmlesea 
before him—consumed only, as he kissed, by the burning need 
to find a way of safety from this dreadful, threatening spot. 

“When shall I see you again?” he besought her in a low 
voice of intensity, for his apprehensions divined a resistance in 
the girl’s body, as if her weariness wished to put his impor¬ 
tunities aside and divest herself of his caresses. “To-mor¬ 
row?” he prompted eagerly, for the girl made no answer to 
his question—and at all cost he must see her again. He must 
endure Dimmlesea and this awful countryside another day, 
if only to accomplish that. 

. . . Nay, the girl did not know when he would see her. 
“What good’ll it do either on us?” she asked, indifferently. 
If she had possessed the least inkling of the motive of his 


288 


The Tree of the Garden 

pleading she would have spurned him and left him there and 
then. That Barnard Lattimer knew well. But he pleaded 
now with the tenderness of self-concern; his lips grew urgent 
when the safety of his skin depended on them. For ofttimes 
the parent of true eloquence is cowardice, and certainly the 
latter can be as indefatigable as courage when cornered. She 
didn’t know. What did he want to see her again for? And 
at last: “Aye . . . maybe,” the girl assented. He pleaded of 
her—Barnard Lattimer pleaded of her—“Promise me. Make 
it a promise. I must see you again before I go.” 

“Nay . . .” the girl decided. “I’se done wi’ promises noo. 
Folks breaks promises ti me; I s’ll mebbe break mine ti them. 
I’ll promise naught.” And no entreaty on his part would 
stir her from the stubborn resolution. “Let me get inti ’oose, 
noo,” she begged him. “He’ll ’a been back long sin’. As like 
as not he’s ta’en hissen to bed.” 

With that, seeing no hope of the least relenting in her, he 
was constrained to let her go; hating her for the stubbornness 
he could not melt; kissing her like a thwarted mendicant with 
wrath at heart and lying lips of supplication. She accepted 
his last kisses without a word—without a sign. For all the 
falsehood of protested passion he could not coax one spark 
of animation to her face. It was a mask—immovable. She 
suffered him to use her cheek, her mouth, her eyes, as if they 
had been things discarded; of not the smallest worth to her 
or him. Balked by her apathy, his anger could almost have 
been stung to fresh desire, taunted by the hidden knowledge 
that this prolific self had never been divulged to him; that he 
had embraced only the impassive sheath of its distress. Yes I 
If only he had not been hungry, and Dimmlesea six miles or 
more away . . . 

She passed from him in silence, moving like a piece of 
detached, scarce distinguishable darkness up the garden path. 
And Barnard Lattimer watched her from the gate, conscious 
of a strange trepidation, as though his cowardice dreaded to 
lose sight of her. Suppose . . .Yes, suppose! 


X 


I 

B ARNARD LATTIMER was absent from Beaton- 
thorpe three days. More than days they seemed to his 
mother, on tenter-hooks of interest for her son’s return 
and all the novelties he might bring back with him. Weeks, 
rather, they seemed to Mrs. Openshaw; huge intervals of time 
filled with every gradation of fear; from the vague and dull 
and featureless, to those poignant visualisations of the dreadful 
in which life stands still before its own horror made objective. 
When at last her trembling fingers took up the receiver of 
the telephone, and she heard through the internal tumult of 
her brain the breathy voice of Mrs. Lattimer proclaim: “Bar¬ 
nard’s just got back!” for awhile she could not speak. Help¬ 
less, she could only hold the burring ear-piece in an enervated 
hand and hearken to Mrs. Lattimer’s impatient voice apostro¬ 
phising her: “Are you there?” Her lips found strength at last 
to give assurance of attentive hearing. “Ask Barnard to come 
and speak with me soon, please. At once. I cannot bear the 
uncertainty much longer.” 

Mrs. Lattimer did not obey her friends’ instruction to the 
literal extent of asking Barnard to speak with her; she brought 
him. Not that the lawyer in Barnard Lattimer desired her 
company, or accepted it—when imposed on him—with any¬ 
thing more encourageful than silence. But his mother’s curi¬ 
osity was serene in its indifference to truth. “Mrs. Openshaw 
particularly wished me to come with you, Barnard,” she said; 
and Barnard Lattimer was too correct a son to question or 
oppose his mother’s word. Mrs. Lattimer threw over her shoul- 

289 


290 


The Tree of the Garden 

ders two or three of those crazy coverlets she was wont to wear 
on all occasions for the least pretext, and the two of them 
walked round to Mrs. Openshaw’s house in the flower-scented 
stillness of the early August evening, after dinner. The first 
sight of Barnard Lattimer’s face flung Mrs. Openshaw’s thick 
fears into disorder. Only his mother’s energetic head and 
dancing plumage as she sailed across the drawing-room brought 
the confirmation her heart needed. “What did I tell you! 
There’s no occasion to worry your head a moment longer. 
It’s all settled. I told you it would be. Guy can get better 
as soon as he likes now; there’ll be no more trouble with her. 
No, no, no! Don’t thank me. Thank Barnard. I’ve nothing 
to do with it. Barnard has arranged it all. Thank him.” 

She spoke of thanks as if these were already visible on her 
friend’s embarrassed lips, seeking only articulation. Yet noth¬ 
ing, surely, was farther from Mrs. Openshaw’s mind than 
gratitude at this moment. Not gratitude or any other form 
of exultation leaped up to her lips; instead, a sort of shrinking 
horror draped them; the eyes that turned to Barnard Lattimer 
were almost fugitive. She closed them for a moment as if 
to escape awhile the strain of vision, asking in a low and 
troubled voice: “What has happened, Barnard?” 

“Happened!” protested Mrs. Lattimer. “What never would 
have happened but for Barnard. Barnard’s arranged every¬ 
thing. Everything!” 

“. . . You have seen her?” she asked Barnard Lattimer in 
a timid voice. He answered “Yes,” and for awhile she lacked 
the courage to enquire more. For his answers to her question¬ 
ings touched her son, too, and the fierce faith she had in him 
feared being shaken. “What is she like?” she forced herself 
to ask at length. 

Barnard Lattimer screwed his mouth to an expression of 
calculated reluctance, as if he found the question hard to 
answer without inflicting some measure of pain on the asker of 
it. “She would not be likely to meet with your approval, 
Mrs. Openshaw,” he answered guardedly. 


291 


The Tree of the Garden 

Mrs. Openshaw closed her eyes and sat for a moment 
wrapped in silent pain. She said at last, in truth scarce know¬ 
ing what to say that might suggest fact without stating it: 
“She realises the position?” 

Barnard Lattimer inclined his head: “I made it quite clear 
to her.” 

“She . . . she accepted it?” 

“In the end—Yes!” 

In the end—Yes! That phrase, suggestive of so much, dis¬ 
turbed her visibly. 

“You mean ... ?” she said, and left the burden of the 
rest to him. And since he did not take the opening imme¬ 
diately: “If there is anything ... I ought to know, Barnard, 
tell me.” 

“There is nothing,” Barnard Lattimer decided, “that it 
is in the least necessary to trouble you with, Mrs. Openshaw. 
The chief thing (so far as you are concerned) is that I have 
succeeded in effecting a settlement satisfactory (I believe) to 
both parties. You need certainly have no fear that Guy will 
be likely to compromise himself again in the same quarter. 
I have taken measures to guard against that." 

The cold conclusiveness of his voice, that should have reas¬ 
sured a reasonable mother, served only to alarm her. She 
echoed the word “Measures!” with an intonation of bewilder¬ 
ment and concern. “What do you mean, Barnard? I don’t 
understand; you haven’t told me. What measures have you 
taken? ... You are keeping something back from me, Bar* 
nard,” Mrs. Openshaw declared. “You are trying to spare 
me something that I ought to know, and suffer. I am sure. I 
am quite sure you are. What is it? The girl . . . How does 
all this affect herf What is happening to her?” 

Barnard Lattimer let his glance rest on her a moment, as 
if he calculated how much discretion might impart; how much 
withhold. 

“Of course . . .” he dropped his voice more confidentially 
at that, as if its brightness were a light he lowered, “. . . 


292 


The Tree of the Garden 

you will understand, Mrs. Openshaw ... it has been expe¬ 
dient to get her away from Whinsett.” 

“From Whinsett!” Mrs. Openshaw exclaimed. She con¬ 
fronted him with tragedy in her face and hands. 

“From Whinsett!” Mrs. Lattimer exclaimed within her¬ 
self, echoing the tones of her friend’s voice. “Barnard never 
told me that!” 

“For awhile, that is to say . . .” Barnard explained, detach¬ 
ing himself by a more casual tone of voice from any participa¬ 
tion in Mrs. Openshaw’s concern, “until the affair has quite 
blown over.” 

“From Whinsett!” Mrs. Openshaw repeated. The excla¬ 
mation came veiled with a sudden weakness, as if the idea 
were too horrible for her shocked emotions to support. “ . . . 

Leave her home? Leave everything? Because of . . . She 

* 

could not bring herself to speak her son’s name. “Oh Bar¬ 
nard! Barnard!” She collapsed at that and shook in silence 
on her chair. 


2 

He dallied with his cuff-links, as if tears and feminine 
emotions constituted no true part of a lawyer’s business or 
understanding—things in themselves illogical and utterly out¬ 
side the law. Mrs. Lattimer, soliciting her son’s notice with 
a gesture broad enough to catch and to compel his eye, lifted 
her hands to heaven and shook her head in testimony of the 
hopelessness of the unregenerate nature his patience had to 
deal with. These tears accused, insulted him. They were 
monstrous tears, offensive as flung stones, with the woman’s 
“Barnard! Barnard!” She cried: “Well, I declare!”—to 
ease her pent-up indignation. “Of all the ingratitude!” More 
than this she might have said, but Mrs. Openshaw recovered 
her face from her handkerchief, and expunging the traces of 
her recent tears as though apologetic for their weakfiess, en¬ 
quired : 

“Where is she now, Barnard?” 


The Tree of the Garden 293 

He assumed a look of pained perplexity, as though to let 
her see how hard she made his duty for him. 

‘ I am afraid that is a question you really must not put to 
me, Mrs. Openshaw.” 

She said, in the same tone of voice, neither weak nor reso¬ 
lute: “I want to know, Barnard.” 

“I hope you will not press the question.” 

“On the contrary, I do press it.” 

“Because ... as your lawyer, Mrs. Openshaw, acting in 
your own best interests, I feel this is a matter you should 
not know.” 

“But I ought to know . . .” Conscience spoke the words, 
but conscience at best was only half sincere. For what 
would this knowledge profit her? It would only weaken her, 
as Mrs. Lattimer declared. 

“Goodness me!” she cried. “Whatever do you want to 
know for? Don’t seek to be told anything . You’re not fit 
to be told anything. You know you aren’t. What does it 
matter where the girl is?” 

Once upon a time Mrs. Openshaw’s conscience would have 
repudiated with pride such solace as was tendered to it by 
Mrs. Lattimer and her son. Conscience would have pro¬ 
tested: “This is no fare on which to feed a soul.” But now 
it was essential that her conscientious parts should be divested 
of any arrogance. For the sake of her peace of mind it must 
be made humble. Oh, let her have faith, have faith! Let 
her thank her friends. Let her beg their pardon for a gratitude 
that seemed so grudging and unready. “Assure me only one 
thing, Barnard!” she besought him. “Assure me . . . that 
wherever this poor creature is she is happy.” 

He gave her the desired assurance with grave conviction. 

“You need not have the least anxiety about that, Mrs. 
Openshaw.” 

“I might have known it. I might have been very sure of 
it!” her humility affirmed. “Forgive me if I ever seemed to 
doubt you. She must want for nothing, Barnard. Treat her 


294 


The Tree of the Garden 

as a sacred obligation laid on me. Promise me she shall never 
know one moment of reg.rft for what has happened. Food, 
clothes money . . . whatever her needs may be, supply them, 
please. Supply them wisely, but generously. Look after her, 
for my sake, as if she were someone dear to you . . .” 

All these things, and others, Barnard Lattimer devoutly 
undertook to do. It eased her conscience wonderfully. Her 
heart was filled with the goodness that welled up into it. 
She said in a broken voice, “God bless you, Barnard!” 

3 

Who once subscribes to falsehood becomes the parent of a 
living thing, for a lie first uttered is but new-born, with all 
its life to run. It grows in waywardness and stature, an off¬ 
spring void of love or any bowels of remorse, extorting sus¬ 
tenance by threats, and a perpetual shelter in the bosom of 
its birth. Thus much to her cost did Mrs. Openshaw discover. 
Her breast was an habitation for ever subject to this dire 
prodigal’s return. For ever the dread summons resounded 
on the door, throwing conscience into confusion; bringing sud¬ 
den horror to the peace and purity within. For now, she 
was aware, the last supreme step had been taken. No con¬ 
fidence was possible between herself and son. The past, with 
all the dreadful part she took in it, must be put far behind 
her. Minutes, hours, days and weeks must be heaped upon 
it like dead leaves and mould, to keep its secret down. 

“Thank God,” she told herself at times, “I suffer for his 
sake. It is my title to forgiveness. It shows my soul is still 
alive. Surely his love will pardon when it knows!” 

Suffer? Was it not suffering enough to forego unshared 
and undisturbed communion with her son at the very season 
when the sacred tree yielded its ripest, holiest fruits? Was it 
not suffering to see and shirk the trouble in his eye, to note 
the silent misery consuming him; the flicker of perpetual pain 
upon his mouth that scarce the brightest smile could altogether 


The Tree of the Garden 295 

quench; the captive restlessness awaiting only the moment to 
be free? 

The very day succeeding her fateful interview with Barnard 
Lattimer, Charlotte came in quest of her, bearing another 
dreadful letter in her hand. Mrs. Openshaw’s heart foundered 
at the sight of it. What! these volcanic fires were active still ? 
Charlotte Lattimer thrust the missive before her notice with a 
gesture almost condemnatory, saying in a suffocated voice that 
trembled between mortification and tears: 

“Look!” 

“What! . . . Not again! . . .” Mrs. Openshaw con¬ 
fronted the accusing envelope with a shocked face. “Oh! 
Charlotte, Charlotte!” 

“He made me,” the girl protested, almost resentfully, repu¬ 
diating a burden not by any right her own. “I tried not to. 
I said it wasn’t fair to ask me. He ought to speak to you.” 

“To me?” Mrs. Openshaw recoiled from the suggestion 
in visible alarm. “Charlotte! he must not. I cannot bear it. 
I beg you will never suggest the idea to him again.” Once 
upon a time her pride would have revolted at the thought that 
her son’s confidence in her should ever be dependent on Char¬ 
lotte Lattimer’s persuasion; but now her pride had come to 
learn humility in a bitter school; it sought only to accept a 
coward’s shelter behind this young girl’s skirts. 

“It is all right for you , Mrs. Openshaw!” her friend’s 
daughter had the temerity to say to her. “But for me . . . 
it’s terrible. He’s always talking about her. He’s asked me 
if I’m quite sure that I posted that first letter for him. Oh! 
you’ve no idea what it’s like. I hate it. He’s written all this 
letter himself, with his left hand. I don’t know what’s in it. 
I don’t want to know. I only addressed the envelope. Here 
it is.” She made a movement as though she would transfer 
it to Mrs. Openshaw’s keeping, but Mrs. Openshaw withdrew 
her hand in conscientious horror, crying: “I cannot!” After 
she had purged that first obliquity in fires of remorse, and 
slaked the ashes with her tears; to sin again . . . Oh no! she 


296 The Tree of the Garden 

could not! Was the hearth of conscience never to be clean ? 
And yet, the girl objected: “I don’t want it!” in a voice not 
less emphatic than her own; reproving her: “You took the 
other. I wish you never had. . . . Guy says he means to go 
to Whinsett now!” she said, adding this drop of bitterness to 
her listener’s trembling cup. 

“To Whinsett?” Mrs. Openshaw almost whispered the 
word in the intensity of her horror of it. 

“. . . He says he means to go next w r eek,” the girl imparted, 
with a voice that scarcely hid her satisfaction to be relieved of 
such unpalatable knowledge at someone else’s expense. “As 
soon as ever he can. He says he cannot stand this uncertainty 
any longer. Something must have happened. She would 
never have treated him like this unless it had. And as soon 
as he has been to Whinsett and spoken with her . . 

“Spoken with her!” Mrs. Openshaw interpolated, with a 
startled voice. “But surely! . . . Barnard . . She said 
no more, hushed by an overpowering reality, but clasped her 
hands and bit a quivering lip. 

“That’s what Guy says,” Charlotte Lattimer declared, as 
though doggedly resolved to disembarrass herself of all these 
odious confidences. “And as soon as he has done, and learned 
the truth ... he is coming back to tell you everything. That’s 
what Guy says. Everything.” There seemed almost a malign 
pleasure in her reiteration of the last word. “Oh, no, no!” 
Mrs. Openshaw ejaculated feebly, as if these protesting nega¬ 
tives had power to hold dread fact at bay. “He must not; 
he must not. Not yet. Not until things are greatly changed. 
Not until he is strong enough . . . and wise enough to bear 
the truth.” 

“I must consult Barnard,” she said, her voice and face all 
clouded with concern. “I must consult Barnard at once. He 
will advise. We must be guided by him.” Yes. Conscience 
must seek its refuge henceforth in the legal rectitude of Bar¬ 
nard Lattimer; go on its knees to him and take his guidance 
given as from God. 


The Tree of the Garden 


297 


4 

Dimmlesea! Dimmlesea! The old familiar name; the old 
familiar sound; the old familiar place; the old familiar azure 
belt of sea; the old familiar scent of bleached aridity and 
oceanic vastness; the old surge of memories, beating with huge 
waves against the heart like a strong high tide in one tremen¬ 
dous flood of sweet and bitter, of joy and dreadful sadness. 
Realisation, operating with sudden force on all things seen, 
destroyed the very substance of them. Guy Openshaw, step¬ 
ping from his compartment on to the station platform, seemed 
rather to fall into a deep and poignant reverie than to accost 
hard matter with the senses. Surely this preposterous visit 
was a dream. The same persistent dream that had troubled 
his half-sleeping moments all these long weeks past. He had 
not taken leave of Beatonthorpe; he had not really torn him¬ 
self free of his mother’s solicitude at last, to do the thing so 
urgently demanding to be done. He would wake up shortly 
to find himself seated in the cushioned chair beneath the great 
beech, or in the verandah of the garden-house, recalled to actu¬ 
ality by Charlotte Lattimer’s timid utterance of his name. 

For this liberty alone was a sensation too unwonted to be 
true. He seemed lost in the spaciousness of it; reality was 
only to be found at Beatonthorp, compressed into an intimate 
small compass of existence. Outside the limits of his mother’s 
grounds and garden all looked visionary and unreal. Identity 
felt stripped of more than half that made it. No chairs, no 
cushions, no soft solicitations, no gentle importunities pursued 
him here. Only this arm, supported lightly in its sling of silk, 
attested who he was; reminded him of the curious dream¬ 
like errand to be done. He admitted no more faith in what 
had brought him than did Barnard Lattimer when confronting 
Dimmlesea ten days before. The clear conformation of pur¬ 
pose seemed to have melted on the journey like a lump of ice, 
escaping from him all the while in a despondent drip. The 
desperate zeal that had surmounted every obstacle, overcome 


298 The Tree of the Garden 

every argument, entreaty, here had lapsed and left him. Only 
the certitude of failure took him forward. He went animated 
by hopelessness. If she had been at Whinsett (his tired 
thought ran) she must have written. Two letters he had 
sent her; no single line had reached him in reply. He had 
been ill, and yet she sent no word of sorrow; he had reaffirmed 
his love, and she was silent. For his own comfort he fabri¬ 
cated reason after reason to account for the unaccountable; 
each more monstrous than the other. Was Thursday Hardrip 
a living creature, or but the product of a sick delirium? 
“Hardrip! . . . Hardrip!” he seemed to hear bewildered lips 
repeat, in answer to some hypothetical enquiry, “Nay, there’s 
been neabody o’ that name i’ Whinsett i’ my time, ooivver!” 

And yet, pushed to that degree of perplexity which seeks 
escape from bondage by an outbreak into the impossible, surely 
no dream could stir his blood as this dream did. Suppose if, 
after all his trepidation, she should be there! Yes; there at 
the cowshed door, with a strange, diffident smile of greeting 
on her face; embarrassed by his unexpected presence, yet pro¬ 
saically calm. “It’s you? You’ve come back ti Whinsett 
after all, then!” Yes. And suppose. Suppose by one consent 
they passed into the cowshed, he and she, and there—without 
a word—he took her in his arms and clasped again the won¬ 
drous warmth of her submissive flesh; stooped to the passive 
wetness of her lips; looked down into the drowning wetness 
of her dark fringed eyes. Yes! suppose that! Why, all his 
blood stood still at the terrific supposition, like the heaped-up 
waters of the Red Sea, and then collapsed in a boiling flood, 
submerging the scruple-host pursuing his desires. After these 
weeks of abstinence and hunger how he would kiss. Not with 
cold lips of calculated reverence, but with the impassioned 
restraint of thankfulness and joy. He would absorb her into 
his gratitude; drink her up through the lips into his very being. 
Yes. There in the warm and aromatic cowshed, heedless of 
time or place or circumstance, but uplifted like the eager sea 
in a supreme tidal enjoyment of their own unity. Nay, this 


The Tree of the Garden 299 

was no dream that stirred emotion so! These feelings had their 
root in something deeper than delirium. Oh, God ... if 
it might only be! 


5 

In Dimmlesea, Guy Openshaw wasted neither look nor mo¬ 
ment. Luncheon of a sort he had snatched at Hunmouth, 
obedient to his filial promise given; but food of this material 
nature choked him. He took his seat in one of Abram Block- 
ley’s chaises and resigned himself to the tedium of the road. 
Externally his relaxed limbs presented the very picture of 
leisure, but his mind repudiated all comfort offered by these 
dusty cushions. Restless and tormented, it coursed in front 
of the chaise, like a hound, impatient of the dilatory flash that 
followed. Red wheat ripe for the reaper; barley bleached and 
rustling dry; yellow oats and blackening beans; his mind re¬ 
marked them while it ran—but dared not for an instant dwell 
upon them. The old rapture was forfeited; his feelings now 
could rise no higher than a sense of pain. The sight of 
Plumpton caused his heart to beat. What if the blacksmith 
should be there to hail him as he drove by! The thought 
disclosed his own cowardice. He was afraid. Secretly afraid 
lest the first voice that spoke to him should lend confirmation 
to his fears. And there, of truth, the blacksmith stood in the 
smithy door, holding the long pincers in his bony hand, gazing 
interrogatively down the road in the direction of the sound 
of wheels—as from time immemorial he had stood—grim with 
enquiry until his creased visage relaxed into a beam of recog¬ 
nition. The sight of him brought something like a gulp into 
the boy’s throat. Bull-ring, shoeings, laughter and friendship 
round the ancient forge amid the pungent reek of charred 
hoof; walks with Dibner Suddaby; drives with Thursday 
Hardrip ... all these memories thronged about him, mutely, 
imploringly, like ghosts from graves. And the friendship of 
the blacksmith’s smile, the friendship of his grey and oily 
beard, the friendship of the very soot upon his thumbed and 


300 


The Tree of the Garden 

blackened forearm as he stretched it forth in greeting—that 
went to Guy Openshaw’s heart. Here was a living part, at 
least, of the happiness he had come back to Whinsett to seek. 
Yes! The Plump ton blacksmith with his grimy hand and face, 
and the loose-tiled smithy, and the ampelopsis weeping over 
the kitchen door, were a vital part of happiness—a vital part 
of self, woven by Time into the texture of his being, until 
identity was half compounded of, half dependent on these 
things. For a moment his feelings had no tongue to serve 
them. He could only stretch out his free left hand and cover 
up his dumbness with a smile, drawing strength and self- 
possession from the blacksmith’s iron fingers. Yes, and all 
the while seek omens in the greeting, saying to himself (for 
instance) : “Would he welcome me so warmly if there were 
anything to hide?” Unless, perhaps, the long and searching 
look the smith directed to his pale countenance and cradled 
arm disclosed some other, deeper interest than that of health 
alone. It might be so. But all the smith’s solicitude seemed 
for himself. Of this accident he had heard no word. Guy 
Openshaw must explain the meaning of this silken sling, re¬ 
count the fateful circumstances of his going home. And then, 
of course, lost in wonder at the strange narration, the black¬ 
smith must raise his voice to cry: “Missus!”—and the black¬ 
smith’s wife must make appearance through the festoons of 
ampelopsis and throw up hands protestive of surprise and glad¬ 
ness unprepared, and hasten down the trod to catch the guest 
before departure. 

And all the story of Guy Openshaw’s experience since leav¬ 
ing Whinsett was once more to tell. To the blacksmith’s wife 
he showed by special favour the thread-like cicatrix that crept 
faintly out of sight beneath the warm hair on his temple, and 
the blacksmith’s wife, taking his head into the compassion of 
her two hands, gazed on the emblem with awe and womanly 
delight. It lent her courage to remind the visitor that she 
had kissed him once (did he remember?) and her husband 
had been angry with her for her fondness. 


3 oi 


The Tree of the Garden 

“Diz thoo think Mr. Openshaw wants ti be kissed by syke 
as thee?” her husband taunted her. “He can get all kisses 
he wants, wi’oot coming to Plumpton for ’em.” 

His usage of the w^ord “Plumpton” smote Guy Openshaw’s 
hearing with a dull significance. Plumpton! Why Plump¬ 
ton? There was no reference, then, to Whinsett. What did 
the omission betide? But all the while his smile was on the 
blacksmith’s wife, and she read the sanction in it and had 
her wish; and her husband doffed his oily cap intolerantly, and 
clapped it on his head again to disguise the gratification of see¬ 
ing his wife so favoured above Plumpton women. Then where 
(if the blacksmith’s wife might make so free to ask) was Mr. 
Openshaw going now? To Suddabj^s’? Aye, she’d thought 
as much. And had he come to stay? She hoped so; she hoped 
devoutly he wouldn’t be leaving them yet awhile. They’d 
missed him (hadn’t they, Adam?) last time he went. Plump¬ 
ton felt lost, like, without him. All these things he listened to, 
and all their questions answered, with consuming wretchedness 
beneath his smile. Only his smile saved him. Without that 
this trouble must have shown. And yet . . . the blacksmith’s 
voice and the voice of the blacksmith’s wife sounded so genuine 
and unconcerned that he almost found courage to put his fears 
to the test here, where so much friendship was assured. To 
ask for news of Whinsett and the state of all good friends 
there. The question was in his eyes, but he dared not utter it. 
He caught one surreptitious look on the face of the blacksmith’s 
wife, and it frightened him. It darkened all the kindliness that 
formed alike his comfort and his torture. It made him eager 
to be gone. He put out his hand, took leave of them, mounted 
the chaise, drove away, defended to the last by his belying smile. 


6 

And now, turning up the Whinsett road, Guy Openshaw’s 
heart began to beat in earnest. If his visit to the Plumpton 
smithy had disturbed him, it had sustained him too. This 


302 


The Tree of the Garden 

human friendship open to his needs was like a pleasant hos¬ 
telry of hearts, offering refreshment to the hungry traveller. 
He had partaken of its kindly fare with gratitude and passed 
on cheered and strengthened; but now, as the Whinsett road 
unwound itself, disclosing to his troubled sight objects dread¬ 
fully familiar, he was oppressed with the cowardice of one 
whose errand takes him to the awful door of Destiny. He 
stood, in mind, already on the threshold. In what guise would 
Destiny confront him? Would she show ruthlessness or mercy? 
And this whitewashed cottage with the mottled walls and 
ominous chimney-stack on which he fixed his eyes—could it be 
in sober truth the grim abode of fate? Aye! judging by the 
sinking of his hopes, the cowardly commotion in his blood, it 
must be. He gazed on it with the fascination of horror. So 
mean it looked. So dead, inert, despondent, promiseless and 
tragic. Such a wave of shame and hopelessness crept over him 
in passing that he lacked even courage to bid the driver halt. 
Not until the chaise had rumbled by and the cottage lay some 
score of yards behind him did he find the power to impose 
his will. Thereat the driver tugged the reins; the horse drew 
to the roadside, browsing at once upon the grass. Guy Open- 
shaw descended and retraced his steps. By right she should 
have come to meet him. All his starveling hopes cried out for 
her. She should have broken into sight like a vision, by the 
cowshed door—that was her true place. Or by the water-butt. 
Yes! that, too, was a spot inseparably associated with her mem¬ 
ory. He should have found her keeking out at him from be¬ 
hind the bilge of it, wrapped shyly in the amplitude of a smile 
that formed for her both voice and hiding-place. 

But she was not. The gate-sneck rattled unresponsive to 
his touch, as if he were a stranger and it had no message for 
him. He walked up the garden-trod with forebodings of deso¬ 
lation. A silence, deeper than any he had known, dwelt—or 
seemed to dwell—over this neglected homestead. The window- 
panes, powdered with dust and spattered with more recent 
rain, had the semblance of a countenance on which unwiped 



3°3 


The Tree of the Garden 

tears of grief have dried and fixed their stains; staring now 
without soul or animation on the untidy garden. He wasted 
no time on any summons at the front door, knowing the futility 
of it, but passed at once to the cowshed and looked across the 
threshold with a hope that lifted its sick head and died. Only 
the utter emptiness of the shed returned his gaze; a dreary 
emptiness that seemed as if it knew him not. Nothing bright¬ 
ened at his footstep; nothing stirred; no expectancy flashed out 
in a living current to meet and mingle with his own. Only 
the untidy cow-clags slopped upon the cobbled floor, and the 
smell of green dung, and the rusty head-chains trailing to the 
ground; and the muck-besom propped up in its corner; and 
the three-legged stool overturned and tenantless. 

For a space he stood at the door, unable to tear himself away, 
filled with inexpressible emotion; staring at the altered features 
of a spot that had been once upon a time so meaningful and 
dear to him. A spot once upon a time epitomising every joy 
in life and hope of heart—and now, lacking that vital element 
essential to it, but a soulless byre for brutes to drop their 
ordure in; a spot almost terrible to contemplate, like a face 
deprived of all intelligence—expressionless and void—that suf¬ 
fered his gaze to fasten on it and betrayed no feeling. He 
turned away at last on a despondent heel and walked beneath 
the burden of a growing fear to the back door. By rights it 
should be open; if this house was warmed with human blood, 
hens should be pecking their strategic way over the scoured 
flagstone to reach the richer spoils of the kitchen. But the 
closed door rebuffed him. He knocked, and knocked again; 
tried the latch, at length, prompted by the courage of despair 
—only to meet the opposition of the lock. No sound; no stir 
of feet; no movement. The dead silence entombed within this 
dreadful vault extended to the outer air like an influence of 
death and subdued all other sounds to its own similitude. The 
cluck of poultry, the querulous, sotto-voce squeals of pigs, 
striving to attain some deeper stage of animal contentment, 
were but accentuated modes of the awful silence in which this 


3°4 The Tree of the Garden 

place was wrapped. Dreadfully assured of the emptiness of 
George Hardrip’s home, despair scrupled no longer to act on 
the assurance; sought here and there; stared shamelessly 
through window panes, shielding its eye from the embarrass¬ 
ment of reflections with a hand. The vision of familiar things 
observed through intervening glass, of cups and saucers, of 
unwashed pie-dishes, of ruddled floor-tiles, of immobile big 
boots sprawling at grotesque angles; of empty chairs as human 
hands had last disposed of them, seemed fantastic in its awful 
fixity. What had happened to this house? To her? In God’s 
name what had happened ? 


7 

He took his leave at length; reseated himself in Abram 
Blockley’s chaise. From this moment all seemed monstrous. 
The outer world framed but a magnified distortion of his own 
trouble, reflecting his perplexities; asking of him the self-same 
questions he asked of it; losing reality in introspection. The 
storm of welcome let loose upon his head at Suddabys’ was 
like a very bedlam, involving him in gusty bewilderment and 
dumb pain. Despite the earnest protestations of his sick heart 
a meal must be at once prepared for him. The ancient history 
of his accident must be declaimed by rote like an anniversary 
recitation. His arm must be inspected; the scar upon his 
temple touched by each jealous finger. He must stand with 
the patience of an oak, besieged by every blast of interest that 
blew; the centre of a cyclone whose friendly fury threatened 
to uproot him. He must be conducted without delay to view 
the fresh-hung paper, barely dry, upon the parlour walls. He 
must sit him down, sir, and rest awhile. 

Everything unchanged, unaltered, save himself alone; hid¬ 
ing his sickness behind a hollow smile. Rapidly the old famil¬ 
iar table in the old familiar room was draped and spread; 
heaped with the old familiar fare. Here he must sit as if no 
tide of trouble beat upon his heart, feigning interest in con- 


The Tree of the Garden 30 S 

versation with the kitchen, for all it touched on things indif¬ 
ferent and remote—yet lacking courage to lead it into his 
graven channel of despair. Of everything they seemed to talk 
but that. The dog, sneaking from the kitchen unobserved, 
took up its station by his side, thumping on the floor for 
favours with an intense and concentrated tail. He welcomed 
it as his deliverer; surreptitiously transferred into the void 
beside him morsels that must otherwise betray an appetite at 
fault. And by that wondrous subtle understanding which 
exists between the fraudulent of every degree, the dog con¬ 
tributed its perfect part to the deception practised; ceased the 
tell-tale drumming of its tail; took all doles in silence; impor¬ 
tuned him only with two intense, sharp, supplicating eyes, rein¬ 
forced by the persuasive warmth of the muzzle from time to 
time reposed upon his knee. As the meal progressed their in¬ 
timacy waxed and ripened; they seemed to be fellow-sufferers 
smitten by the same fate, and sharing not food, but sympathy. 

Yet little by little, albeit ages seem to pass without yielding 
one ray of light on what Guy Openshaw’s trouble seeks to know, 
some secret sense in him divines the topic nearer. 

Freed from the obligation to incur the caller’s gaze in 
speaking, or any need to meet his eye, the Misses Suddaby 
display a growing willingness to contribute their quota to the 
conversation; throwing out informative phrases on this and 
that, addressed to no one in particular, but dropped like scraps 
below the kitchen table for those to feed on who will. Inter¬ 
spersed too with these items proffered by hospitality in its com¬ 
pany voice Guy Openshaw detects whispers—misjudged for 
secrecy—which the sisters exchange between themselves from 
time to time; utterances for the most part inaudible, or letting 
but one word escape, whose tone or purport troubles him. 
“Aye! . . .” “Naay! . . .’’—and particularly the third per¬ 
sonal pronoun feminine, spoken with a contemptuous empha¬ 
sis that makes his heart sick. “Her!” 

And all at once the name of Hardrip had been mentioned, 
accompanied by some audible demur; by a cautious “Wisht!” 


306 The Tree of the Garden 

from Mrs. Suddaby; by remonstrance from her husband— 
“Lawks-a-massye, missus! What’s thoo wishting at? Did 
ye tek notice o’ yon aud spot, sir?” he asked of the parlour in 
an uncompromising voice of interest and friendliness. Guy 
Openshaw took refuge in hypocrisy. “Which spot?” he en¬ 
quired, and fearing enlightenment at hand, his heart started 
dreadfully to thump. “Why, yon aud spot o’ George Har- 
drip’s, sir,” the farmer told him. “Didn’t ye think to gi’e it 
a look as ye cam’ by?” 

“It seemed to be empty . . .” Guy Openshaw remarked, in 
a tone of casualty that outraged his own hearing. He did not 
add that he had dismounted from Abram Blockley’s chaise 
for the purpose of inspection. It was the driver of the chaise 
who subsequently told them that. 

“Empty!” concurred the farmer, with fine significance in 
the iteration. “By Go, aye! It stands like to be empty. 
An’ it will be empty an’ all before long, you may depend, sir. 
Yon aud brussenguts spends main part of his time set i’ 
Plumpton public, and lass’s left him.” 

The information fell with sudden force upon Guy Open- 
shaw’s neck, as if the farmer had struck him with a staff. 
For some time he could not speak. He could only sit in 
silence before this ghastly mockery of a meal, suffering the 
exquisite torture of the blow just dealt him. Stunned by the 
tidings his hearing for awhile refused all sustenance of things 
heard. For now that the crust of fine consideration had been 
broken, his hosts (saving the farmer’s wife) vied with one 
another in heaping the terrific fare on trouble’s platter. Mrs. 
Suddaby alone, sensing perhaps in the silence of their guest an 
interest more deeply implicated than pride would condescend 
to show, tempered the subject with charity and kindly caution. 
The genial soul of Suddaby loathed reticence as a needless clog 
on intercourse. The Misses Suddaby saw in this theme their 
vindication, and trampled with satisfaction on a fallen foe. 
They made no claims to be magnanimous. Magnanimity (it 
was plain to see and hear) was deemed but waste of breath 


The Tree of the Garden 307 

and sentiment on such a creature. Bad and brazzent she had 
been from birth; bad and brazzent she would continue to the 
end. She’d ’a been gone a fortnight on Sattidy. An’ good 
riddance. 

“Wisht! Dean’t say so!” the voice of Mrs. Suddaby en¬ 
treated. “Lass mayhap is not so much ti blame as folk 
mek oot.” 

“Aye, by Go! the farmer declared. “Ti gan off an’ leave aud 
man i’ oose alone, wi’ three coos ti milk, an’ butter ti mek up. 
What sort of a trick do ye call that for a lass ti play upon 
a man?” 

“One mustn’t believe what everybody says!” his wife re¬ 
marked indulgently. 

“Nog, I’ll tell ye what,” exclaimed the farmer, “if aud 
man sent her aboot her business he did right. You may de¬ 
pend she must ’a got past hidings for aud George Hardrip 
to say or do a deal. Thoo knows very well oor Dibner seed 
her night afore she went away, walkin’ upo’ cliff top wi’ a 
rare Winny-watty fro’ Dimmlesea.” 

“Why, an’ if he did?” Mrs. Suddaby protested in a lenient 
and charitable voice, “There’s not a deal o’ harm i’ that, 
sure-ly! It may ’a been somebody lass knew.” 

“Knew!” the farmer exclaimed, with scorn for such mis¬ 
placed indulgence. “Aye! I’ll awander it’s somebody she 
knew, missus. If she didn’t know him then, she’ll know him 
noo well enough. They say lass’s gone off wi’ him. Why! 
I’ll tell ye what it is, sir,” he continued—this time to the 
parlour—“syke a lass as yon nivver framed ti mek a decent 
woman. It wasn’t in her blood, you may depend. Oor Dib¬ 
ner, look-ye, was fond enough ti hang aboot George Hardrip’s 
place noo an’ again—but he wasn’t grand enough for her. 
She didn’t want a steady chap ti court an’ wed an’ work for. 
She wanted ti arn her meat an’ easier road than that, same as 
her mother did afore her . . .” 

So it went on, this dreadful conversation, unrolling the dark¬ 
ness from the guest’s eyes like a great curtain, and letting in 


308 The Tree of the Garden 

upon his comprehension the stupendous light of truth. Truth? 
How much truth was there contained in it? Why, so much 
at least that the listener’s trouble lacked all power to defend 
itself or her from this tremendous charge. For though the 
accusing kitchen voices discharged their allegations with the 
frankness that realised no culpability in him, politely ranking 
his detachment with their own, he sat beneath the dreadful 
shadow of implication, sharing surreptitious shame with the 
avowed object of it. She had fled from Whinsett. Fled from 
him. Gone with another, in violation of all their sacred vows 
and pledges. Flung his love into the dust and trampled on it. 
Oh no! It could not be. His despair resisted such an insup¬ 
portable belief. Something terrible had happened to poison 
truth, to make its lips drip falsehood. What was it—what 
was it? 


8 

. . . Whinsett, that one-time land of milk and honey and 
human kindliness, green lying beneath illimitable acres of 
blue sky, girt with broad waters of sea and river; uplifted by 
wine-like airs to very heaven in divine perpetual rapture, but 
now become a narrow torture-chamber for the soul—he won 
escape from it at last. 

They racked him with their friendship to the end; invented 
unimaginable ways to multiply his torments with some ex¬ 
quisite new kindness. Thrust a lurid bunch of strangulated 
garden flowers into the chaise beside him to mock him from 
the seat. Eggs for Mrs. Openshaw; honey; home-made jam; 
carrots she was so fond of (poor aud lady). All these things 
and others they heaped upon the cushions for despondency to 
suffer and to gaze on. He drove away charged with friend¬ 
ship and burdened with solicitude to the last, smiling and 
waving his free hand to them until the hedge was merciful 
enough to snatch them from his sight, whereat he sank down 
with a sobered face to the undistracted wretchedness of his 
own sorrow. At George Hardrip’s cottage he stopped the 


3°9 


The Tree of the Garden 

chaise again, bade the driver await his coming at the foot of 
the hill—that he might be disembarrassed of these idle, alien 
eyes—and pushed his way once more through the creaking 
gate. This time the furious barking of George Hardrip’s dog, 
that first rushed out upon him with the ceremonial fierceness 
for a stranger, and overwhelmed him next moment with obse¬ 
quious testimony of recognition and delight, gave promise of 
the farmer’s presence here at last. And guided by the con¬ 
testant clamour of pigs, their hunger made frenetic by the certi¬ 
tude of food, he walked without hesitation to the styes, where 
straightway his glance encountered the broad shoulders of 
George Hardrip bent over a brimming pig-bucket whose con¬ 
tents he stirred with a wet and mealy stick. Not until this 
task was done, and a loud and greedy suction replaced the 
importunings of expectancy, did he hasp the stye door and turn 
round sourly upon the new-comer. Even then he said no 
word, but stared aggression at Guy Openshaw as if his bull¬ 
like savagery were goaded by the mere spectacle of fine clothes. 
Mingled with their obvious disfavour it was hard to say whether, 
in the old man’s over-brimming eyes, there dwelt any recog¬ 
nition of his visitor or not. At no time had Guy Openshaw 
stood in closer proximity to him than now, or on any other 
footing than that of sufferance sour and undisguised. Greet¬ 
ings, to be sure, had passed between them; as little cordial 
on the farmer’s part as the repressed growl of a surly sheep¬ 
dog; but such acknowledgments of one another had been em¬ 
ployed on both sides but to keep intercourse at bay. To speak 
now, in face of the prescriptive silence of the past, was no 
light matter; yet Guy Openshaw felt too sick at heart to 
study feelings. 

“I really called . . .” he said, with an effort to ignore the 
anger scowling on the old man’s face and preserve an amiable 
tone in speech, . . to see your granddaughter, Mr. Har¬ 
drip.” Perhaps the opening might be infelicitous, albeit it 
served the purpose of a better, for the farmer’s face was 
agitated with a sudden passion that shook his lips and eyes, 


3io 


The Tree of the Garden 

and he tightened his hand convulsively on the slop-stick. 

“Aye!” he cried, in a suffocated voice that struggled in the 
grip of wrath. “I know very well syke fellows as you wouldn’t 
come ti see me. I know that. But you mey tek yoursen else¬ 
where,” he declared with rising anger. “Gan where she’s 
gone ti. You wean’t fin’ her here.” 

It was true then. She had left her home. Guy Open- 
shaw drew a hand across his eyes as if to brush away the web 
of unreality that bound them. 

“Not here!” he echoed weakly, for phrases adequate were 
hard to find, and the farmer’s face and attitude lent no encour¬ 
agement to words. “Can you tell me, please, where she has 
gone to?” He strove to speak politely, even to this aggressive 
and objectionable being, but it was plain that he erred in 
thinking politeness any passport to the farmer’s favour. 

“Gan tea?” the farmer cried. “Gan tea?” He smote the 
battered pig-bucket resoundingly with the slop-stick. “I know 
ni more nor that pail where she’s gone tea, nor what’s got 
her! An’ I care less,” he protested in a louder voice. “She’s 
nea good ti me. She’s nea good ti annyboddy. She’s gone wi’ 
syke chaps as you, to be what syke chaps as you’s made her.” 

The awful accusation struck trouble between the eyes, and 
made it reel with the injustice of the blow. 

“. . . As me!” Guy Openshaw repeated vaguely. 

“Aye! as you!” old Hardrip asseverated before his victim 
could recover, driving the indictment home. “Isn’t there 
enough women ti serve ye where you come fro’, but you mun 
run after lasses i’ country, wi’ their work to do and their meat 
ti earn? When syke idle fellows as you, that’s more money 
nor you know how ti spend, an’ more time nor you know 
what ti do wi’, comes courtin’ farm-wenches, it’s nobbut for 
yan thing. What’s time, what’s money, what’s lasses ti you 
fellows, that has as mich time on their hands as countryfolk 
dizn’t get till they’re dead, an’ more money wi’oot sweating 
for it nor countryfolk has chance ti addle (earn) all their 
lives.” 


The Tree of the Garden 3 11 

The terrible sincerity of the old man’s wrath left no doubt 
in Guy Openshaw’s mind of his belief in the justice of the 
accusation. He boiled with the inward forces of injury and 
rancour; shook like a saucepan on a roaring fire. 

“You are mistaken,” the son of Mrs. Openshaw declared 
at last, roused to self-defence against this monstrous charge. 
“. . . You are quite mistaken. It is absolutely untrue. 
When I came to see your granddaughter ... no such thought 
as you suggest was ever in my mind. In fact ... I can tell 
you now. It is right that you should know. I wished to 
marry her. It was arranged.” He would have poured out 
the breathless story of his trust, but George Hardrip knocked 
the explanation aside with a right arm of derision. 

“Marry her?” he said, and his anger took fresh lease of life, 
fed by this further contribution to its flames. “To hell wi’ 
marryin’ her. Dean’t think ti come ower me wi’ your lies. 
I should be as big a fool as you tek me for nobbut I believed 
it. You never intended nea syke thing.” 

“It is the truth,” Guy Openshaw protested, without 
warmth; without the least resentment at the downrightness 
of the farmer’s words. For his greater trouble so benumbed 
him that this extra cudgelling administered by the old man’s 
wrath fell upon a pride too stupefied to feel. 

“Truth! There’s nea truth in ye,” the farmer cried. “You 
nobbut say what sarves ye. Aught’s good enough, you think, 
for folks like us.” 

“I asked her to marry me,” Guy Openshaw affirmed. “She 
f lid she would. I went home on purpose to speak with my 
mother.” He did not add that courage for the fulfillment of 
this purpose had failed him. “And then ... I had an acci¬ 
dent. I broke my arm. . . .” 

“It’s a pity but w^hat you’d broke your neck before ever 
you cam’ ti Whinsett,” the farmer roared at him, unmollified 
by admissions of such folly. “Marriage wi’ yon lass! More 
fool you if you’d ever meant tea! Syke as her was never fit ti 
mek a wife for syke as you; you dean’t need me ti tell ye that. 


312 


The Tree of the Garden 

Your own common sense should ’a telt ye, as hers mud ’a telt 
her. You come ti Whinsett and turn her head wi’ your fond 
fine talk, and spoil her for what bit o’ use she’s fit for. All 
she can think on after that is to dawk hersen oot i’ finery to 
please syke fellows as you, an’ gan wi’ ’em of a neet when she 
should ’a been i’ bed.” 

That imputation of the terrible stifled Guy Openshaw with 
leaden arms. By right he should have insisted on the facts, 
and faced them; but the spirit of enquiry seemed suffocated. 
He dared not ask; he dared not seek to know. He feared to 
look upon the altered features of the dead. 

“I wrote to her,” he said after awhile. “I wrote to her 
twice. Did she get my letters?” 

“I neither know nor care,” the farmer said. “She didn’t 
tell me what she got, an’ it wasn’t like I should tek trouble 
ti ask her.” With that he picked up the pig-bucket and thrust 
a sullen arm beneath the handle as if to make it curtly clear to 
the visitor that his time and patience were exhausted. 

“Have you any idea where she would be likely to go to?” 
Guy Openshaw enquired. 

“Likely?” the old man asked, and the question roused his 
indignation once again. “How do 7 know what she’d be 
like ti do?” 

Without any further sign of interest he moved heavily 
across the yard, leaving the visitor to stand or go as best he 
deemed. Already the farmer had reached the kitchen door, 
when Guy Openshaw broke the spell that bound him, and fol¬ 
lowed the retreating figure to the flagstone. From his sov¬ 
ereign purse he drew forth two, three of the shining coins, and 
pressed them persuasively into the farmer’s hard and dirty 
hand that protruded through the handle of the pig-bucket. 

“I am sorry! . . .” he said, in a low and rapid voice. 
“You don’t know how sorry I am . . . For all of us. Will 
you accept these?” They clinked into a palm that closed on 
them and raised them without delay to the scrutiny of the 
old man’s watery eyes. “What’s these for?” the recipient 


The Tree of the Garden 3 ! 3 

enquired at last, peering at the coins with an incredulity that 
seemed as though never it could satisfy itself. 

“For you . . Guy Openshaw rejoined. “If you will 
have them.” Old Hardrip gazed in silence at the three gleam¬ 
ing sovereigns lying one upon the other in the callous hollow 
of his hand. For him! ... If he would have them! . . . 
He made a rapid computation of all the liquid comfort these 
yellow emblems would buy, and it dawned upon his under¬ 
standing then, for the first time, how much grudgery and 
rancour had been expended for a fool’s purpose in the past. If 
only he had lent this visitor civility and welcome . . . who 
knows how many of such precious tributes might have come 
his way! To offer gratitude for the gift was something beyond 
the limits of his nature, to be sure, but he could curse innu¬ 
merable chances lost, and deepen hatred of the hands that had 
it in their power to give so freely where and when they chose. - 

“. . . And if you should ever hear from her,” Guy Open¬ 
shaw continued, pressing his opportunity, “. . . if she should 
ever write to you and let you know where she is . . . will you 
send me word, Mr. Hardrip? At once!” 

“Write to me!” the farmer said, with an instant hardening 
of conviction as he put down the pail and dropped the coins 
into the extended gullet of a canvas pouch, “She’ll never write 
to me.” 

“. . . But if she does,” Guy Openshaw persisted. “If you 
hear by any chance—from anybody—where Thursday is, will 
you let me know? I shan’t forget you if you do. See! I will 
let you have my address. Take care of this. The moment I 
hear from you ... I will send you a registered letter. You 
understand?” 

Aye! The farmer understood. The farmer promised. He 
promised with a blaze of new resentment against the girl. 
For wily wrath had not confided to this visitor all the circum¬ 
stances of her going. Come back? Write to him? Not she! 
She’d tek good care no registered letter should ever come his 
way; she would choke the fountain of prosperity just when it 


314 The Tree of the Garden 

showed a likelihood to run. To hell wi’ her. To hell wi’ all 
syke lasses that bit the hand that fed them. He had toiled 
and moiled, had sacrificed whole years of drudgery—for her! 
She was the source and lurid explanation of his unsuccess; his 
bitterness; his inebriety. If only now he could recall the 
pounds misspent upon her; the labours for her welfare waged 
in vain. 


9 

And Guy Openshaw resumed his seat in the attendant chaise 
and rumbled back to Dimmlesea. At Plumpton he stopped for 
some brief moments to exchange farewells with the blacksmith 
and his wife, but his smile was like a breastplate, invulnerable 
to all but the doughtiest weapon of enquiry and the blacksmith’s 
wife asked nothing, and learned nothing, and was left to lament 
an ignorance unsatisfied after the chaise had drawled away. 

. . . The sun was sinking as the chaise brought Guy Open¬ 
shaw at last to the station yard. Already in the arid patch 
of desolation bordering on the beach, where only cocoanuts 
and ice-cream stalls and kindred pleasures thrive, they were 
stripping the canvas petticoat from the roundabouts and dis¬ 
closing the polished brasswork and spotted horses to view. The 
engine, hissing with compressed steam, was yoked abruptly to 
the organ and tugged music into motion from the midway bar 
where it had come not less abruptly to a standstill the night 
before. Soon the raucous phrases, gathering volume and mo¬ 
mentum, pervaded all Dimmlesea and the sky above it, like an 
assertive stain of sound. The same hilarious ditty of the music 
halls it was that Thursday Hardrip had listened to in company 
with Barnard Lattimer—herself suffering something of Guy 
Openshaw’s despair, though he knew it not. The reeling 
hurly-burly laid hold of his emotions by main force, as it had 
seized on hers, and whirled them impotently round and round. 
For ever they revolved in the same restricted maddening circle; 
without cessation or respite. Even the seclusion of his com¬ 
partment offered Guy Openshaw no escape from the tyrannous 


The Tree of the Garden 315 

sound that made the least compliant ear a slave to its arbitrary 
rhythm. The guard’s shrill whistle blew at last; almost 
imperceptibly the train assumed motion, obliterating alternate 
beats of music beneath its leisured, stertorous puffs of steam. 
Puff . . . puff . . . puff. With gathering strength it left the 
foe behind; but now the rhythmic thud of engine and the 
pulse of wheels, marking successive lengths of rail, caught 
infection from the roundabouts, and chanted the deafening 
refrain. Thought no longer revolved; thought went jangling 
onward, yet without advancing. Perpetually moving; for ever 
stationary, with the tireless delirium of motion gone music-mad. 


XI 


1 


I 

I F Mrs. Openshaw had stood in fear of Barnard Lattimers 
return, she awaited her son’s homecoming in a perfect 
agony of apprehension. As the hour drew near for his 
arrival, all peace and comfort fled from her; her courage ran 
incontinently out like the swift sands of an hour-glass. Who 
knew what loopholes to the truth Barnard Lattimer had not 
left unguarded; what awful chance discoveries her son might 
not have made? Doom seemed in the air. This morning, in 
a paroxysm of remorseful love—seeing him go from her on 
what she knew to be a hopeless errand—she had promised to 
meet him at Hunmouth on his return. But at the last moment 
she dared not. The brougham set off without her. She bit 
a lip of anguish to think how far deception had removed her 
from her son, that she could ever be afraid to meet him—to 
act the mother to him. And when the brougham returned at 
last, crunching the gravel beneath its muffled tyres, and the 
footsteps of her boy drew near the room in which she sat, she 
plunged her face in her two hands before encountering his 
gaze. Eyes of supplication and alarm she raised to him; her 
voice shook more with concern than welcome as she greeted 
him by name. 

“Guy! . . .” 

“Mother! . . ” 

His voice hid no reproach; there was no anger in it; so little 
warmth, indeed, as would have hurt her once upon a time— 
and lent her reassurance now. And when at length she dared 
to read his face, confidence returned. Only weariness and sor¬ 
row were written on it. He knew nothing; he suspected noth- 

316 


The Tree of the Garden 31 7 

ing. Fear, so long her master, yielded in a spasm of thankful¬ 
ness to reassertive love, that felt as if it could not manifest 
itself too lavishly on his behalf. 

“My boy!” she said. “My boy! . . . Forgive your mother 
for not meeting you, Guy. But I did not feel equal to it.” 
She felt the falsehood incomplete, and added: “I have been 
troubled with a headache all day.” 

He expressed his sorrow, and she improvised to win her 
son’s sympathy, despising herself for the deception, yet draw¬ 
ing comfort from the solicitude it gained from him. “Oh, it 
is nothing,” she declared, feigning to lift his apprehensions with 
a tone of lightness. “It will pass away. Indeed, it is better 
now. Now that I have you safely home again . . . Perhaps 

A 

your mother was a little over-anxious, Guy. It has seemed a 
long and dreadful day without you.” But sedulously she 
avoided all allusion to the subject of his journey, concentrating 
every effort on his immediate comforts. He must be tired. He 
must be hungry. She fears the long journey will have proved 
more trying than he was willing to believe. Behind this dis¬ 
play of love for him she sought to hide the guilty part of her 
from the least glance of her son’s suspicion; to drown remorse 
in loving kindness. 

The dinner dragged interminably between them. She noted 
with dismay that Guy ate nothing; herself was hungerless— 
explaining the failure of her appetite by concern for the de¬ 
ficiency of his. “How can I eat?” she asked pathetically, 
“when I see you taking so little? Dear Guy,—eat something 
if only for your mother’s sake.” He said: “I had a tremendous 
tea at Suddabys’, mother. You know how hospitable they 
always are. I’m afraid I spoiled my dinner there.” 

She fastened on the Suddabys as ben trovato; displayed an 
interest in all their doings that surprised him. Her aim was 
clear. She strove to fan conversation to such a pitch of bright¬ 
ness as would deter all but the most resolute and reckless con¬ 
fidence. To subscribe to the preoccupation that consumed her 
son was to make confession inevitable. Silence would seem 


318 The Tree of the Garden 

to wait on silence; and though Guy had pledged himself to 
speak this evening, she hoped—against conviction—that an 
atmosphere of unexpectant cheerfulness might lead him to 
defer the moment until his trouble should be self-effaced, and 
love on both sides might agree to leave the past unwritten and 
unread. But in the drawing-room, when they sat free of all 
ceremony at last, she could sustain the weight of her dissem¬ 
bling no longer. Her son’s white face and strained mouth made 
further silence insufferable. 

“Guy . . . Guy!” She rose and went to him, and laid her 
hands upon his shoulder, and burst into tears. For his look of 
trouble and perplexity, of mute despair, had roused all the 
mother in her. Oh! it was horrible to know oneself the secret 
cause of suffering in one so loved. She added nothing to her 
utterance of his name, but withdrew as impulsively as she had 
gone to him, and went back, weeping, to her chair. It was 
her intimation that the moment had arrived; that he had his 
mother’s sanction to speak to her at last. 

2 

“I want to tell you something, mother,” he said, with deep 
contrition in his voice. “Something I ought to have told you 
long ago. Will you listen to me? I want to tell you every¬ 
thing to-night.” 

For a moment her fortitude forsook her. She said, hur¬ 
riedly: “I can trust my own son, Guy. Do not tell me any¬ 
thing that it hurts you to disclose. Oh! believe, Guy, that 
your mother always loves and understands. However silent 
she may be. If you would rather ... if you would rather say 
nothing more, let perfect trust be sealed between us.” 

He said: “I would rather tell you, mother. I think it is 
right you should know. I shall feel happier when you know. 
I should have felt happier if only I had told you at the first. 
I want your help and advice, mother.” 

“It goes back a long time,” he began. “To the time of my 


i 


The Tree of the Garden 319 

first visit to Whinsett.” For he was anxious she should see 
in his feelings towards George Hardrip’s lass something nobler 
than impulse, more lasting than infatuation. 

“So far back as that!” she said, with trouble in her voice. 
Then it was indeed deep-rooted. Wrapped in silence and dis¬ 
quiet she listened to the history he told her—scrupulously 
relieved in the telling of all such parts as might have fired his 
mother’s fears or chilled her sympathies. The storm he re¬ 
created was the very soul of propriety; its thunders and light¬ 
nings were respectable to the last degree; but a storm is a 
storm, and it burst over Mrs. Openshaw’s consternation like 
the dreadful thing it was. They had had to seek shelter, her 
son and this strange girl. They were together who knows 
how long! “I think I first came to love her then, mother,” 
Guy said with terrible simplicity. That her son should have 
been subjected to all these deadly elements of thunder, light¬ 
ning, rains, darkness and her own sex caused Mrs. Openshaw 
to tremble with dismay. 

“It was ... it was unwise of you, Guy,” she permitted 
herself to say at last, and he owned the justice of her stricture 
so humbly that her apprehensions sickened all at once. 

“I hope ...” She closed her eyes and spoke the words into 
the centre of her own blindness. “I hope you were a gentle¬ 
man, Guy,” she said. “I hope you behaved ... as I trust my 
son would always behave. In the way a true gentleman would 
always behave towards a lady.” 

He did not answer for an instant, and the hesitation shocked 
her. Without giving him the chance to speak, she cried: “Oh, 
Guy!” in a voice of entreaty and despair. 

“I kissed her, mother,” he confessed at that, and she closed 
her eyes again and rocked as though bowing to some dire 
decree. 

Only when she heard his voice at last express contrition for 
the sorrow he was aware his words had cost her: “Forgive 
me, mother. All this, I know, will hurt you terribly”—did 
she shake off the reverie in which she sat, and own the truth 


3 20 


The Tree of the Garden 

of it. ‘‘Yes, dear. All this has hurt me deeply. Your mother 
had hoped . . . had hoped better, wiser things of you, Guy.” 

He said: “I am sorry, mother,” and both of them sat silent 
for awhile. 

After that, realising that her son had spoken, and now duti¬ 
fully left the word with her, she began by telling him in a voice 
cleansed of all reproof—a voice whose gentle reasonableness 
sought to recommend her judgment to him—that he was far 
too young to know his own heart. “You are but a boy, dear,” 
she reminded him. “It is not to be supposed that you can 
understand such matters, so young and inexperienced as you 
are. Even older people are misled by feelings. Feelings should 
be governed—not allowed to govern. They need wisdom to 
guide them, dear, as children do at first, until their feet are 
very sure. Your father and I were not married until com¬ 
paratively late in life. We knew each other’s hearts, and our 
own. We were very sure of ourselves. We only suffered our 
feelings to declare themselves after long months—I might say 
years—of trial and probation.” 

Smaller falsehoods than this, religious history tells us, have 
choked the sayers of them; but her frantic zeal for truth 
stopped short of nothing. Not truth as truth was, with all 
truth’s imperfections and defects, sufficed her—but truth 
as truth should be in Sunday dress; the vision splendid, not 
the substance. Always she looked upward to Truth’s lofty 
countenance; never would she acknowledge those clay-soiled 
feet on which Truth stood, rooted in earth not less than having 
part in heaven. For her son’s sake she altered history; imparted 
souls to facts; gazed ever to the ultimate; scratched out the 
faulty and offensive lines of Nature’s composition; tampered, 
edited, suppressed, rewrote. 

“You were alone ...” she said, with face and voice of 
ineffable indulgence. “There was none to give you help or 
counsel, Guy; to remind you of your higher duties. Your 
chivalry outran your reason. You were so ardent in your zeal 
to serve this stranger, Guy, that I think you overlooked the 


321 


The Tree of the Garden 

duty owing to your mother; the duty owing to yourself. Didn’t 
you, dear?” She tried to coax admission to his lips, and seeing 
trouble there went on apace. “For that you have suffered. 
For that, indeed, you are still suffering. You are so young, 
Guy, that to your limited experience this unaccustomed suffer¬ 
ing seems the end of all. But believe me, my dearest, it is only 
the beginning—the first step to something higher, nobler. Only 
through suffering do we reach our true selves. So long (please 
God!) as my son’s heart and conscience remain pure, and he 
can look his motives frankly in the face, profiting by failures 
of the past—who knows? He may be richer for this lesson. 
Wiser. Stronger. Better able to perceive the right—and 
follow it.” 


3 

For a while he sat silent, pondering the significance of her 
words; and the trouble deepened on his face. 

“That means . . . you would not have consented, mother?” 
he asked in a voice of such despair that she lacked the courage 
to answ r er him directly. 

“But Guy, dear!” she said, as if appealing to his sober judg¬ 
ment. “Think! Think in what a quarter you have contem¬ 
plated the bestowal of your love! Your life is filled with 
duties, and obligations, and (I trust) ambitions such as a girl 
like this could never share. She would be left altogether out¬ 
side your true life, mortified with her inferiority and helpless¬ 
ness. And you . . . Oh, my dear Guy! . . . when you sought 
in vain the spiritual comfort which it is the joy and purpose of 
a wife to give, your bitter disillusionment might end by scorn¬ 
ing her. Instead of the true helpmeet you looked for you 
would find yourself burdened only with a partner for your 
pity. Constant pity corrodes the strongest love at last. In 
love there must be no disparity; no scorn. You would be—oh! 
you would be wretchedly unhappy, Guy. I know it. I know 
it.” She intensified the sincerity of these latter sayings with 
the glint of tears. 


322 


The Tree of the Garden 

“I had thought of all that, mother,” Guy said. “I knew, of 
course, that she was unfit for such a life as ours at present. 
But once she had been educated ... If only we could have 
taken her away from Whinsett and sent her to some school. 
I would not have minded how long I had to wait for her. Two 
years . . . three years. Until I had left Oxford. Would 
you have been willing to do that for me, mother? Would you 
be willing still? To take her by the hand and help me to make 
her what, with your assistance, I am very sure she might be?” 

That appeal, in turn, she dared not face directly. “Send 
her to school?” she echoed with the blankness of despair. “Guy, 
dear! Don’t you realise that education is not the matter of a 
year or two? It is the matter of a whole life. . . . Suppose, 
dear, that this girl found education irksome and vexatious. 
Suppose that education taught her nothing but the bitter knowl¬ 
edge of her own shortcomings. Oh! Guy, it is too terrible to 
think of. Put all thought of such a project from you. Be 
thankful that the matter has befallen so. Believe, dear, that 
it is for the best; that it is ordained for some wise purpose 
beyond your ability to understand.” 

“You have not seen her, mother,” he said, with a stubborn¬ 
ness that hurt her. “I wanted you to see her. If once you 
had seen her you would not speak so.” He plunged into a 
recital of the girl’s transcendant qualities until his mother’s 
sorrowing and shaken head brought him to a despondent 
standstill. 

“Oh, Guy! Your youthful thoughtlessness is almost cruel. 
For me this is infinitely more terrible to listen to, to suffer, 
than you can possibly imagine. I have always hoped so much 
for my son. Forget all this that has happened. You have lent 
your heart where never it should have been lent. But it is yours 
still ... to dedicate to nobler service than in the past. 
And . . . ”—her emotions surged within her—“ . . . you 
have your own mother still, Guy, to comfort and sustain you. 
No love in all the world is equal to a mother’s love. Nobody 
can ever love her son as a mother loves him.” She let the words 


The Tree of the Garden 323 

hurry on with her like vehicles on a rough road, carrying the 
topic far from dreadful falsehood and deceptiveness to a spot 
where conscience might find a green and hallowed resting 
place and taste once more the refreshment of its own purity. 
If she could but reclaim her son’s obedience, melt him through 
tenderness and win him back again to the old faith—then would 
her interference find its sanction; her sin be purged; the 
transitory false made ultimately true; the crooked purpose 
brought parallel with the perfect end. “I do not always want 
to keep you by me, dear. Some day I hope and trust you may 
find your true helpmeet, Guy. One born into your own world, 
familiar with your own ideals and duties, who has been taught 
to know the value of all the things in life you hold dear; whose 
influence will help you upward on your path, not drag you 
down. When that day comes, Guy, nobody will rejoice more 
truly than your mother.” 

He turned away from the specious comfort offered. The 
supreme confidence of youth that views all things—even its 
sorrows—as immortal, rejected the proffered sustenance. 

“If Thursday Hardrip has deceived me, mother,” he said at 
length, “I feel as though I shall never trust any woman again.” 
She uttered a protesting cry. “Except you,” he added quickly. 

Except you! Those last words scalded her conscience like 
hot tears. She could only reiterate: “Oh! surely, surely, Guy! 
Oh, surely, surely!”—and shake her head with grief and appre¬ 
hension. 

Thus, with much more to the same effect respectively on 
both sides, the interview that had been of such vain hope to 
each of them, died slowly down to cold and inconclusive em¬ 
bers ; ashes of futility making comfortless the hearth they 
should have warmed. 


4 

And now another factor crept into Mrs. Openshaw’s dis¬ 
quiet—the constant sight of her son’s unhappiness. He lost 
all interest in life; would sit forever (so it seemed to her) in 


3 2 4 The Tree of the Garden 

the abstraction of his own thoughts, from which her simulated 
cheerfulness disengaged him with difficulty. She had not the 
consolation of knowing that there w r ere moments in his trouble 
when he struggled hard to bring himself into comformity with 
her will; when he sought to kindle insupportably the con¬ 
sciousness of having wronged his mother. Yes! Desperately 
hard he strove to make himself a lowly penitent before her 
righteous wisdom; to view the past contritely through her 
immaculate clear eyes. Only this way, he felt sometimes, could 
peace of mind be won. And all the while, through every tor¬ 
turing flux of spirit, he hungered hourly for the girl; craved 
the sight of her, the sound of her; the whole vanished 'wonder- 
world of sweetness in which the two of them had lived so 
intimately awhile. Such times as the splendour of this vision 
failed him, all other things in life were naught. Out of sheer 
weariness he lacked the will or power to dissimulate, and Mrs. 
Openshaw gained alarming glimpses of the soulless lack of 
interest in which her son lived. 

The revelation roused her to the imminence of a new horror. 
Her son was slowly languishing. Despite the exercise of every 
care on his behalf he was sinking, before her eyes, into a state 
of apathy and danger. Something must be done at once, she 
told herself, to rouse him from this fatal lethargy. He must 
be taken from Beatonthorpe 'without delay. But when she 
communicated this decision to her son: “Guy, dear! I have 
been thinking. It is September already. We are letting all 
the lovely summer go by. And you are so much stronger now. 

I have been thinking we ought to complete our plans for leav¬ 
ing Beatonthorpe at once”—he turned away emphatically from 
the suggestion. 

“Not yet, mother,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to go away 
just yet. Let us stay here a little longer.” 

“But why, dear?” she asked, with consternation written 
plainly on her face. “You know what the doctor said. You 
were to have a change of air. He was insistent on the point.” 

Her son did not dispute the doctor’s counsel. 


The Tree of the Garden 3 2 5 

“I am very happy here,” he said. “I seem to have seen so 
little of Beatonthorpe this summer. All my books are here . . . 
It is so pleasant to sit out in the garden and read. ... I can’t 
bear the thought of going away. I want to stay at home. With 
you.” 

He spoke the words without the least attempt to cloak their 
insincerity. She knew, as her own son knew, that home was 
but a mockery, yielding him no joy or comfort. He clung to 
it only because change threatened to snap the last frayed thread 
of hope. At home he was nearer Whinsett; nearer in imagi¬ 
nation to the girl; readier to act in case there should be news 
of her. Already he had written once to Whinsett since his 
return (his mother was aware) and had received a thumbed 
and crumpled envelope addressed to him in his own neat hand¬ 
writing, that he bore away to read in private and never spoke 
of more. 

. . . And now the only boon he asked was solitude. He 
only read (she was assured) to keep unwelcome voices at a 
distance. Books were the secret chambers to which his mind 
retired for perfect liberty of thinking. Before long he would 
shun society; flee from looks and words as if they were assail¬ 
ants. Her mind’s eye recorded the gradual assimilation of that 
other shocking figure with his own. Slowly and surely the 
awful change was taking place in him. Before long he would 
be lost to her in the brooding darkness of a mind diseased, that 
repulsed all comfort from without. Dread broke down her 
fortitude at last. For the recovery of her dear son’s happiness 
and health no price—even his mother’s heart—could be too 
great to pay. And in this spirit, in this hour of her extremity, 
she had recourse to Barnard Lattimer once more. There was 
that in his face of cold reproof and stern discouragement (when 
she sought him in his office) that frightened her; but stronger 
fears drove her forward, and she plunged hurriedly into the 
explanation of her visit. 


326 


The Tree of the Garden 


5 

“I have been thinking, Barnard,” she said. “ . . . All this 
dreadful business is making me most unhappy. Guy has taken 
it terribly to heart. I am beginning to be quite concerned 
about his health. I can detect the greatest change in him. 
Something must be done, Barnard. It is an awful thing to 
tamper with the truth. This poor girl may have really cared 
for Guy. In her own way she may have been deeply fond of 
him. ... I dare not trust myself to think about it. I have 
been dreadfully to blame. We have sown the seeds of dis¬ 
belief in both these hearts, Barnard.” She bit her lip and 
interlocked tormented fingers. “I feel ...” she said, “ . . . 
that I want to see her, Barnard. I feel I ought to see her. It 
is a feeling I have battled with for a long while. My con¬ 
science reproaches me. I have much to answer for.” 

Barnard’s face assumed for an instant a shape of featureless 
dismay, as if the emotions aroused by his client’s changeable 
inconsequence were beyond expression. 

“I thought ...” he said, “that this subject had been thor¬ 
oughly discussed between us, Mrs. Openshaw, and our decision 
was final.” 

“No decision can ever be final,” Mrs. Openshaw returned 
at once, “that seeks to hush the voice of conscience. My con¬ 
science can keep silent no longer. It owns a duty and must 
do it. Where is this girl, Barnard?” 

For a while Barnard Lattimer made no response, but sat 
with folded hands before his desk, stiffening to a posture of 
resistance. 

“I am sorry, Mrs. Openshaw,” he said in accents made most 
studiously polite to drape unalterable determination. “But 
such a step is utterly impossible. In all our interests I cannot 
for a moment accede to it.” 

“Impossible?” she queried in a voice of sudden faintness. 
“What do you mean, Barnard?” 


The Tree of the Garden 3 2 7 

“I am afraid I mean what I say, Mrs. Openshaw. This 
project of yours is quite impossible.” 

“But . . . but you interviewed the girl at my instigation. 
Do you deny me the right to speak with her now that I desire 
to do so?” 

He left that question unanswered. “I am afraid you do not 
realise all the consequences involved in such a course,” he said, 
and moved papers on his desk with minute exactness and pre¬ 
cision, as if to demonstrate that the matter was one only for 
the nicest handling. 

“On the contrary, Barnard,” Mrs. Openshaw affirmed, “it 
is because I have realised all the consequences that I am here 
to make the request. Nothing else has occupied my mind for 
a long while. In my purely selfish love for Guy I have lost 
sight of a higher love—of higher obligations. Once we lose 
sight of Truth, Barnard, and seek to serve her cause by false¬ 
hood—we stray from the Father. For days and days I have 
known it. The bitter fruit of this conviction has been ripening 
in me. Until truth is reestablished—until we all confess the 
evil within ourselves and acknowledge without guile the good 
in others—there can be no peace, Barnard. The very air I 
breathe at home seems poisoned. Slowly and surely I am being 
separated from my son. With every day the rift grows wider. 
I know it. He knows it. I scarcely dare face him. I cannot 
bear another day of misery like this last.” 

“I am sorry, Mrs. Openshaw,” he said, with a politeness 
that scarcely strove to hide his weariness of her emotional 
importunity, “but such a step as you are contemplating is 
diametrically opposed to my opinion and advice. You cannot 
possibly expect me to be a party to it.” 

“Not a party to it?” she echoed. “But surely, Barnard, you 
are not personally concerned in this at all. It concerns only 
myself and Guy. It is I alone who am responsible for having 
acted so inexcusably towards this girl. It is I who hold myself 
prepared to take all blame; to accept every consequence that 
follows.” 

“It concerns me very deeply, Mrs. Openshaw,” Barnard 



3 2 ^ The Tree of the Garden 

Lattimer reminded her. “I have a professional reputation to 
consider, and you cannot expect me to countenance a step which 
seriously compromises that —even if the step were in Guy’s best 
interest; which emphatically it is not. It would be in his worst 
interest.” 

That aspect of the question, to be sure, had not occurred to 
her. She had thought, in the innocence of her heart, that 
lawyers had no reputations to consider. That they were at 
liberty (as her consternation phrased it) “to do anything.” 
But Barnard led her into a maze of legal consequences and left 
her there; lost in dismay; bereft of all direction. Now she 
was flung most utterly upon herself; thrust away from the 
very portals of regeneration. 

“At least, Barnard,” she besought him, brought at last to 
the knees of humility, “you will suffer me to see her. In your 
presence! I will say nothing that you do not approve. I will 
do all you bid me. Can you not let me meet her here, in this 
office, that I may see with my own eyes what sort of girl 
she is?” 

He shook his head. “It would be highly inadvisable, Mrs. 
Openshaw. Such an interview is tantamount to the reopening 
of what has been definitely closed. It might encourage this 
young woman in all sorts of wild hopes. One cannot foretell 
where the matter, once reopened, would end.” 

He spoke with the more conviction in proportion as he 
observed the waning of her own. His arguments, put forth 
with every show of cold reason and deep sincerity, prevailed 
once more over the tumultuous illogic of her woman’s heart. 
She felt her disadvantage; the one-sidedness of her sex that 
used up all its strength to fight a single danger and left a dozen 
gates unguarded. 

“Tell me only, Barnard,” she petitioned in a calmer, more 
reasonable voice, at length, “you are looking well after her?” 

He answered: “You may be very sure of that, Mrs. Open¬ 
shaw.” 

“She must want for nothing. I charge you, Barnard. Every- 


329 


The Tree of the Garden 

thing we can do to compensate indirectly for what has hap¬ 
pened, must be done. Everything. Everything.” She fumbled 
in her satchel and produced her check book. “Does she 
need . . . ?” 

“ . . . Well, perhaps ...” 

He took the slip of paper that she handed to him and put it 
carefully within his wallet. 


* 6 

So, frustrated in her purer resolve, and thrown once more 
beneath the shadow of deceit sprung from her own fateful 
exercise of free-will, Mrs. Openshaw submitted to this destiny 
of her creation; addressed herself with greater energy to acts of 
reparative love and kindness. 

. . . And first, by every means within her power, she must 
seek to detach the fingers of her son’s affections from what 
they clasped and clung to. She must loosen his tenacious hold 
upon the past. If new interests, new hopes, could once be made 
to bud within him, imperceptibly but surely they would thrust 
aside the memories that darkened him now. And because she 
recognised at last the inability of motherhood to bring about, 
unaided, such a transformation, she turned again—more ur¬ 
gently—to Charlotte Lattimer. 

Now that Barnard had closed the last egress to conscience, 
and over her son’s evasive eyes and shrinking mouth Mrs. 
Openshaw beheld with consternation the deepening shadow of 
the bearded man, there was no moment to be lost. Qualms 
must be sacrificed in a crisis, and people do not stand on cere¬ 
mony who quit in haste a house on fire or leave a sinking ship. 
Between two sharp alternatives the dullest mind is capable of 
quick decisions, and, pressed by necessity, Mrs. Openshaw did 
not hesitate. She who had once used every wise artifice to keep 
Guy from the influence of the Lattimers, and especially from 
the cultivation of too close a friendship with Charlotte, now 
devised subterfuges to bring the two together, trying at the 


33 ° 


The Tree of the Garden 

same time, like an ardent proselyte, to fan to greater brightness 
the flames of her own zeal. She strove to see unsuspected 
qualities in Charlotte Lattimer. But she was a fastidious critic 
of her own sex, and the prejudices of a mother are foes hard to 
subdue. A posture insufficiently repressed, a peal of laughter 
unsubdued and secular, the use of words unsuited to young 
womanhood, made her susceptibilities wince. Yet for her dear 
son’s sake the problem must be faced, the ordeal suffered. Else¬ 
where there seemed no help in sight for him. And closer con¬ 
tact with herself and Guy might end by shaping Charlotte 
Lattimer—who knows?—nearer to the mould desired. The 
girl might imperceptibly acquire those finer impulses and feel¬ 
ings which (Mrs. Openshaw was confident) inspired herself 
and son, and formed an unfamiliar atmosphere as yet for Mrs. 
Lattimer’s mundane daughter. 


7 

The weeks passed by; the tints of autumn burned their slow 
way through summer’s green, and not less slowly, not less 
surely, Guy Openshaw’s emotions yielded to the influence at 
work upon them. Little by little the boy’s green sorrow died, 
consumed by an autumnal warmth that seemed to bear already 
in itself the pledge of spring. A month spent on the Welsh 
coast in close companionship with Charlotte Lattimer weak¬ 
ened, even if it did not utterly destroy, his allegiance to the 
past. He turned at length instinctively to her, as homeless men 
turn to a tavern on a long road. Any habitation that has a roof 
against the rain and fire flickering in its hearth, and a light 
courageously defying the outer darkness, is welcome to trav¬ 
ellers wearied with much tramping through wind and wet. Two 
stunted letters came from Whinsett, begotten of direct appeals 
and postal orders. They brought no hope; proved but the 
soundness of his mother’s fears. From the past he shrank with 
loathing, or a pious simulation of it, as from an ear that will 
not hearken; a grudging hand that will not give. It was 


33 1 


The Tree of the Garden 

ended. This blotted page of life was writ and turned. Never 
more would he look back upon it. Never more should pride 
seek alms of one who had abused his love so badly. Let him 
henceforth strive only to make amends for all the suffering 
brought upon his mother’s heart; consult her wishes; see in 
her happiness his chief concern. 


8 

Led partly by his mother’s wishes and partly by the prompt¬ 
ings of a young heart eager to escape from what oppressed it, 
Guy Openshaw turned towards Charlotte in a spirit conscious 
of his own unworthiness. 

The old equality of friendship had been forfeited. There 
showed in his new attitude to Charlotte a hint of humility and 
diffidence. She, on her side, flattered by his obvious attentions, 
accumulated pride within herself to be the object of such wor¬ 
ship. His good looks, youth, riches, qualities so capable of 
exciting envy of her good fortune, could not fail to content her 
with possession of what so many coveted; since young people 
can scarce conceive any greater happiness than to have what 
others crave. Yet she was led to ask herself at times where 
that part of Guy Openshaw’s affection dwelt which had dis¬ 
closed itself so ardently to the farmer’s granddaughter? Her¬ 
self seemed never near it. No glint of passion ever lit his eyes. 
His propriety was almost perplexing. He took advantage of 
none of those covert opportunities that lovers are averred to 
snatch at, for the confession of that delicious platitude—the 
secret common to them both. He never pressed her hand, or 
sat so close to her that their two heads by accident should meet 
and touch. His inflexible propriety piqued her. There were 
moments when she asked herself if this curious respect marked 
the real degree of the feelings she inspired in him. Surely, she 
thought, the feelings quickened by this Whinsett girl had been 
more warm than these he showed to her. Love had borne some 
crimson blossoms, surely; not alone white. And when her 


332 


The Tree of the Garden 

mother prompted her at whiles after she and Guy Openshaw 
had been together: “Well, Charlotte? ...” she would say 
“Well?” in a voice suffused with slight impatience and disgust. 

“You have been with Guy?” 

“Yes.” 

“How is he?” 

“He’s all right.” 

“Has he . . . said anything?” 

“Lots of things.” 

“I mean . . . anything particular?” 

“What do you think?” 

“Not yet? Goodness me! Whose fault is it, Charlotte?” 

“Mine, of course.” 

“I declare! I really think it must be, child.” 

And she would hold forth on the delays of youth and the 
follies of unpractical motherhood. 

“I blame his mother, Charlotte. If only she’d go away and 
leave him to us, he’d soon find his tongue. But depend upon 
it, she’s at him the whole time. Taking stock of his feelings. 
Asking him what he thinks of you, and how you’ve behaved, 
and if he’s quite sure of his mind, and frightening him that an 
engagement is a very solemn step. Goodness! What’s all the 
fuss about? ... I shall have to speak to Guy myself. I see 
I shall.” 

Her daughter remonstrated: “Mother!”—with a scarlet 
face. “You shan’t do anything of the sort.” 

“Stuff and nonsense,” Mrs. Lattimer rejoined. “If he won’t 
speak to you, and his own mother won’t speak to him, I will.” 


9 

She did, in fact, fulfill her threat; reproaching Guy Open 
shaw playfully with the stealing of Charlotte’s heart. 

“I won’t have you make my daughter unhappy, Guy.” 

The son of Mrs. Openshaw apologised profusely. 


The Tree of the Garden 333 

“Unhappy, Mrs. Lattimer? Believe me, that is the last 
thought in my mind.” 

“Yes . . . the last thought in your mind, perhaps,” she told 
him archly, “but you men are all so selfish—and so blind, Guy. 
You cause a girl to care for you without the least regard for 
consequences, and then you are too blind to see what she’s only 
too anxious to conceal from you. Surely . . . you must sus¬ 
pect at times that Charlotte has a heart? Now and again, 
after she’s been with you, she hasn’t a word to say for herself— 
even to her own mother. And if I ask her: “Whatever is the 
matter, Charlotte! What are you thinking so solemnly about? 
Is it that dreadful Guy again?” she flies into a tantrum and 
says ‘Mother!’ most indignantly. As if she could deceive me! 
Well . . . I suppose she will have to suffer it. I had to in 
my young days. That’s the penalty of being a girl. . . There! 
you dear, blind, cruel, clumsy, lovable boy! Now I’ve said 
what’s on my mind. For goodness sake don’t breathe a word 
of it to Charlotte, or all the fat will be in the fire.” 

It was, in fact, the very opening his diffidence required. It 
dispelled the last misgivings on the score of his unworthiness 
in others’ eyes. The tarnish of that first imprudence was out¬ 
worn. He opened his heart to Mrs. Lattimer with such 
warmth and gratitude that she exclaimed: 

“Goodness, Guy! Are you actually proposing to me? I’m 
years too old for you. Tell all that to Charlotte.” 

He asked impetuously: “May I, Mrs. Lattimer? Do you 
think she’ll listen to me?” 

“Why, of course she’ll listen to you, you silly boy!” the girl’s 
mother assured him, “if you tell it to her half as nicely as 
you’ve told it me. Go to her at once. Before you’ve forgotten 
it all. And don’t forget to kiss her, Guy. It means a wonder¬ 
ful lot to a girl. Come straight back to me, both of you, when 
it’s all over. I declare I’m almost as excited as Charlotte 
will be!” 

She greeted them, indeed, with every demonstration of de¬ 
light when they sought her presence after a while, exalted 


334 


The Tree of the Garden 

and abashed by the splendour of the new relationship. She could 
not understand (she said) however they had come to be so 
long in making up their minds. “Why! you are positively 
made for one another!” she exclaimed with rapture. “Both of 
you tall. Charlotte, though she is my own daughter, has a 
charming figure on the slim side. There’s no make-believe 
about it. Stand up together, both of you—back to back. 
That’s it. Why! I declare there’s not more than half a head 
between you!” 

Guy she must kiss. “You belong to me now, Guy,” she 
tells him, applying a pursed and rapturous mouth to both his 
cheeks. “Your mother will have to share you.” 

There was sincerity in her effusion. It derived not only 
from the thought that her daughter’s future was assured; her 
happiness entrusted to the care of this good-looking boy whose 
father had left him handsomely equipped to provide for all the 
whims and comforts of a wife; but that warm sap by which 
alone the tree of life is nourished and kept alive rose in her 
irresistibly. Her individual life was on a sudden wondrously 
enlarged. Broad vistas of hope and interest appeared in it. She 
saw with prophetic eyes into the future, to the fruit of this 
attachment. Maternal—aye, and grandmaternal—prides were 
gloriously stimulated. 

Far otherwise were Mrs. Openshaw’s emotions stirred. 
Albeit long expected, the intimation—when at last it came— 
rang in her ears with the dirgeful sadness of a knell. Emotion 
had no tongue. Overwhelmed by the solemnity of this awful 
moment, she could only gaze dumbly upon the two young 
people and give them the broken benediction of her tears, 
saying out of the depths of her distress: “God bless you 
both. ...” 

As Mrs. Lattimer declared: “Goodness me! Whatever 
does the woman want? Does she know what she wants? 
What on earth is there to cry for? Nobody’s dead. It’s a 
poor compliment to me and to my daughter. It’s positively 
ridiculous. It’s making marriage absurd. Thank goodness 


The Tree of the Garden 335 

I shall have a say in matters now. I won’t have my son-in-law 
ruined just to please a silly mother!” 


10 

Thus the tree waxed, planted on the soil of falsehood; its 
foliage in heaven, its roots in infamy. 

Within four months of that monstrous pilgrimage to Whin- 
sett, Guy Openshaw faced life afresh, furnished with a new 
soul of confidence and hope. It seemed to him, indeed, that 
all his life he had loved Charlotte Lattimer. Those dreadful 
happenings at Whinsett were no more than clumsy improvisa¬ 
tions of his heart to reach the glorious theme for which it 
groped. And if, at whiles, the thought of Thursday Hardrip 
crept into his mind like a suffocating perfume, causing it to 
reel and sicken, he had recourse to Charlotte Lattimer’s remem¬ 
brance instantly; fixed his inward eyes upon her image; lent 
his inward ears to the sound of her voice; clung to her with 
all his loyalty and faith. She had restored his trust in woman¬ 
kind ; given back sight to his blind eyes. With such a stedfast 
star to guide and to sustain him, what could he not accomplish ? 
All his studious ambitions returned to him, inspired and 
energised by her. 

For first he was to go to Oxford. That had been made 
plain. Mrs. Openshaw stipulated that this second love should 
undergo a long probation. And her son had acceded. Joyfully 
acceded. He felt no fear that such a love as this would ever 
confess inferiority to time. Two years. Three years. Years 
did not daunt his youthful confidence. Had they been centuries 
he would have confronted them with undiminished courage 
just the same. He gloried in the opportunity to vindicate his 
feelings, once at fault, and prove to Mrs. Openshaw’s entire 
satisfaction that this time they had made no mistake. She 
dared not show her son the least doubt of them or him. “All 
I seek is your true happiness, dear,” she told him. But she 
spoke in a voice of melancholy resignation. 


336 The Tree of the Garden 

For though she dutifully did her best to keep an open heart 
for the newcomers brought into it, there were moments when 
she felt the fierce desire to shut its doors against them that she 
might have her son’s companionship unshared. She knew now 
that it was a diluted affection he offered her, tasting too strongly 
of the Lattimers. The Lattimers were perpetually on his 
tongue; for ever in his eyes. If he kept silence, be sure it was 
of them he thought. His thoughts lived always there; not 
here, at home. “I am only his mother,” Mrs. Openshaw 
reminded herself with wilful bitterness. “It is natural that 
my son should pay more regard to strangers.” 

Did, at odd moments, the thought of her own part in the 
boy’s destiny come back to Charlotte Lattimer, it was put aside 
without concern. Measured beside the absurdity of Guy’s first 
infatuation, the steps taken to uproot it seemed legitimate and 
reasonable now. Between herself and Mrs. Openshaw no word 
had been exchanged upon the subject since the days of Guy’s 
illness; it had served to lock the lips of both. Nor with her 
brother Barnard had the topic been reopened in more recent 
times. But in shared moments with her mother—whose shal¬ 
low nature hated the necessity to flow in deep and silent 
channels—the matter still continued to be touched on. Mrs. 
Lattimer speculated at intervals on where “the creature” was, 
and what she was doing with herself, and to what extent Mrs. 
Openshaw was providing for her—Barnard affording not the 
least encouragement to remote inquiries. “She will be well 
looked after, you may be sure,” she told her daughter. “Much 
better than she deserves. And, of course, as soon as you're 
married it doesn’t matter.” 

Charlotte, for all she shared her mother’s outlook in regard 
to marriage, seeing in this so-called sacrament little more than 
the opportunity to acquire a trousseau and great liberty, and 
excite the envy of her friends, perceived this foolish episode of 
Guy as the fly in the ointment of her perfect bliss. She could 
have forgiven Guy his folly with good grace; but she could 
not forgive him her part in it. Within the secrecy of her own 


337 


The Tree of the Garden 

heart remembrance of the past seemed light enough to bear. 
But once translated into terms of speech it showed discreditable. 
Her pride shrank from being reminded, even by the most pro¬ 
saic and complacent mother, that the disclosure of one single 
act of hers—even at so late an hour as this—might cost her all 
Guy Openshaw’s affection; all the envy of her friends; all 
the worldly happiness on which her desires were set. Nor 
was she reassured when—being alone with Mrs. Openshaw on 
one occasion—Guy’s mother broke the seal of silence after 
many weeks; drew close to her in a sudden paroxysm of alarm 
and said with a voice of the deepest agitation: 

“Charlotte! ...” 

She answered: “Yes, Mrs. Openshaw?” unsteadily, for 
there was tragedy in Mrs. Openshaw’s eye. 

“Not a word. Not a word, Charlotte ... to Guy. You 
know what I mean!” 

The girl ejaculated: “Oh! Mrs. Openshaw ...” in a 
tone reflecting something of the older woman’s terror. 

“No, not a word!” Mrs. Openshaw repeated. “You might 
be tempted, under some conditions, to tell him . . . many 
things. For your own peace of mind. To have the comfort 
of knowing that your love was built upon a strong foundation 
of trust and understanding. But you must not. He must never 
be told. Even those we love the dearest . . . whose faith in us 
appears to be unbounded, can be changed by one imprudent 
confidence. It would be the height of indiscretion. It might 
ruin every hope. I charge you, Charlotte, to say no word. We 
cannot change the past. We can only strive to live so that the 
present and the future sanctify it.” 



XII 


I 

O N an evening in late February Guy Openshaw sauntered 
towards the H unmouth station beneath a deepening 
sky whose earlier countenance had shone resplendent 
with the certitude of spring. Spring palpitated in the air that 
for all its chilliness whispered of warmth and primrose fra¬ 
grance near at hand. Spring stirred expectantly in the blood; 
lent lightness to the limbs. 

Guy Openshaw had been in Hunmouth since the afternoon. 
He had dined at the Railway Hotel, then gone for a stroll in 
the direction of the docks, his outer senses soothed by the sound 
and contiguity of water; by the huge shapes of ships; by vast 
funnels vomiting thick velvet smoke, or yawning indolently to 
the accompanying simmer of suppressed steam, below a lattice- 
work of tapered masts and intersecting spars against the tinted 
sky; by the clank of chains and clang of hammers, and the 
stupendous voice of syrens unrolling slowly from gigantic 
throats and mounting to the topmast stars of heaven. And 
while his senses found companionship in these somnolent and 
wakeful forces, his mind was occupied with other matters; 
rendered more intense by the environment in which he walked. 
Now and again he drew forth his late father’s watch to reassure 
himself that Time took no advantage of his pleasant introspec¬ 
tion, for a train was greedily devouring the miles between 
King’s Cross and Hunmouth, bringing Mrs. Lattimer and her 
daughter with it, and before long his eyes would be rewarded 
with the sight of Charlotte after a whole week’s deprivation. 
Nor was this London visit altogether unconnected with his 
future, for the engagement between himself and Charlotte had 

338 


339 


The Tree of the Garden 

taken a more emphatic turn of late, and purchases were being 
made (he was aware) that argued a speedier consummation 
of the happiness desired by both. Mrs. Lattimer, in fact, had 
begun to tire already of an engagement whose prolongation 
seemed to her indefinite. She spoke openly of the folly of 
wasting time; characterised Guy’s studious ambition as absurd. 
“Goodness me! Whatever do you want to go to Oxford for? 
Don’t you know enough already? If you don’t, you never 
will. Why! you’ll be an old man by the time you’ve finished, 
and Charlotte will be an old woman.” 

Charlotte, too, infected by her mother’s arguments, began 
to display a certain petulance at the slow progress of affairs; 
to number off the stipulated years impatiently, and to adopt at 
times for Guy’s discomfiture an attitude of calculated dejection. 

To do Guy Openshaw full justice, he sided with his mother 
on the point at issue, and but for the growing disaffection in 
the Lattimer camp, would have been content to undergo a 
longer period of probation than that imposed, had such been 
asked of him by Charlotte or her mother. 

And though he had tried to win Charlotte to his mother’s 
side, and though Mrs. Openshaw had striven overtly and 
covertly to overcome her friend, adducing arguments both 
valid and absurd, the better cause lost ground. Son and mother 
realised alike the growing strength of what they fought with; 
the stedfast determination that even in silence never slept, nor 
ceased to keep its vigilance in smiles. Charlotte flatly made 
the point at issue a test of Guy’s affection. Either he cared 
for her sufficiently to consult her wishes, or he was so much 
more interested in considering his own as to be quite indifferent 
to her feelings. 

As for Mrs. Lattimer, she took the field indignantly against 
her particular adversary at last, and asked her what she could 
be thinking of “to let Guy go to such a place after all that has 
happened.” “You know what these colleges are! My word! 
If you don’t, it’s time you did. They’re nests of idleness and 
dissipation. Do you want to give this girl a chance to turn up 


34 ° The Tree of the Garden 

again? Barnard can’t keep her out of the way forever! Or 
do you want Guy to take up with some still more disreputable 
creature, just because there’s no Charlotte to look after him? 
You’re perfectly ridiculous. The sooner the boy’s safely mar¬ 
ried and has a good sensible wife to take care of him and keep 
him out of mischief, the better for everybody. You know as 
well as I do that you’ll never have a moment’s real peace until 
he’s married and settled down.” 

To that terrific argument, with all its threats and possibili¬ 
ties, Mrs. Openshaw capitulated. She had, at heart, no love 
for universities. Only her desperation had espoused the project, 
through desire to temporise, to hold destiny at a distance in the 
hope of something ultimately better for her boy. She said: 
“I will consider it. I will consider it!” But the cause, she 
knew, was lost. Mrs. Lattimer’s purchases on her daughter’s 
behalf became more definite, more concentrated to an end. The 
trousseau was no longer hinted at, but talked of. And Guy, 
seeing the cherished Oxford vision recede ever more faintly 
into the dreamland where already vanished Whinsett was, 
resolved at length to seek his consolation in a deeper, more 
desirous love. What were colleges and quadrangles and the 
masculine companionship of his kind measured against the soft 
fellowship of Charlotte Lattimer? His heart quickened at 
the mere remembrance of her smile. Again and again, as he 
w&lked, he entertained his ardent fancy with the recollection 
of her face and form; took the outstretched hand she tendered 
to him; looked into her kindled eyes; said “Charlotte ...” 
with inward lips that longed to speak the name aloud. 

And all at once, living in the internal brightness of his mind, 
and threading his way through the outer gloom by rote, a 
strange thing happened. 

2 

He was passing through one of the poorer dim-lit side streets 
that lay between the Beatrice Dock and the Station Square, 
and had already quickened his pace after a reference to his 


34 i 


The Tree of the Garden 

watch, when his outer consciousness registered the presence of 
two figures on the causeway opposite. At first, believing them 
to be in amicable conversation, Guy Openshaw moved on with¬ 
out regard to these denizens of a shadow-world so far remote 
from the radiance of the thoughts he lived in. But all at once 
it dawned upon his understanding that one of the couple, a girl, 
was seeking to escape obstruction offered by the second, who— 
moved to anger by resistance—raised his voice threateningly 
and let loose upon her a word that caused Guy Openshaw’s 
indignant blood to boil. Such episodes as this were common 
enough in Hunmouth, as in all other seaports of its size. At 
ordinary times he would have passed them by with a quickened 
step, inspired only by desire to escape the contamination of 
sounds and sights so abhorrent to fine feeling. But to-night, 
for some reason not quite clear to himself, the incident com¬ 
pelled his notice. Perhaps it was that the thoroughfare was 
deserted, and its comparative darkness lent the comfort of 
anonymity to his courage. For when he saw the man, inter¬ 
cepting his victim first on this side and then on that, seize her 
suddenly by the wrist, Guy Openshaw’s finer feelings joined 
issue with his indignation. He crossed the road at once, com¬ 
manding as he did so, “Stop! do you hear?” Startled by which 
unexpected interference the man let go the girl’s wrist and 
swung round instantly to confront the coming danger. 

“What the hell’s it got to do with you!” he challenged 
threateningly. “She spoke to me first.” The girl murmured 
in a low voice: “I never did.” 

“You tried to stop her,” Guy Openshaw said, in a voice 
of resolution. “I saw you. You have no right to interfere 
with her.” 

“Haven’t I?” the man demanded, uttering a string of hor¬ 
rible invective against the girl. “No right, haven’t I ?” Who’ll 
stop me?” 

“I will!” said Guy Openshaw very firmly. He spoke with 
the more determination because the girl stood by, and his 
chivalry—once enlisted on her behalf—was resolved to go to 


34 2 The Tree of the Garden 

any length to give her its protection. ‘‘You had better go 
away . . . ” he advised the girl over his shoulder, and without 
a further word she turned on her heel. With her departure 
some glimmer of sobriety seemed to drift through the man's 
brain, awakening him to a sense of his position, for all at once 
he dropped pugnacity when Guy Openshaw was most prepared 
for it, and to the latter’s utter stupefaction took his hand in a 
cordial grip, affirming that he sought no quarrel with anybody 
and loved nothing better than fellowship with all men. 

Guy Openshaw wrung his hand's freedom from the tenacious 
clasp that held it, and turned on his heel from such detestable 
company, walking now more hurriedly to make up for the loss 
of valuable time. On his way down the street he had to pass 
the girl, who did not turn her head at the sound of his foot¬ 
steps, but moved with her glance lowered and her face averted 
to the wall. No words came to his lips in overtaking her, yet 
he was acutely conscious of her presence. Perhaps it was her 
studied posture of humility that spoke to his sympathies, letting 
him so clearly see she made no further claim upon his notice. 
She might be what the drunken man had said; certainly she 
had used no effort to deny it, accepting the shameful accusation 
without dispute. Yet in his exalted frame of mind, with the 
face of Charlotte serving to uplift him from the sordid actuali¬ 
ties of life, he perceived a certain sublimity about the girl’s 
submission; a certain pathos in the turned head. And all at 
once, through the intensity with which his kindled knightliness 
urged him to discharge one final courtesy towards this creature, 
a curious suffocating intuition rose into his being. He had 
already passed her, and was now beyond the need to turn or 
speak at all, when an unaccountable impulse spun him round. 
He stopped, uttering the banal words: “Excuse me . . . ” 
and awaited the girl’s approach. She checked her progress after 
a pace or two, and stood silently against the wall. Emotions 
not aroused since, sick and solitary, he had returned to his 
mother’s house from that doleful pilgrimage to Whinsett took 
hold upon him now. The posture in which the girl awaited 



343 


The Tree of the Garden 

him seemed on a sudden strangely, terribly familiar. The 
droop of her head, the impotent dependence of her arms, sent 
a tremor through him. He asked unsteadily, “Who are you? 
What is your name?’’ 

She answered in a voice so low as to have been inaudible 
to any hearing less urgent than his own: “Thursday Hardrip.” 

Aye! that was the voice. That was the tone, without his 
being aware of it. that had thrilled through all the fibres of 
his mem or}' when the girl first spoke in the presence of the 
drunken man. He took a step nearer and peered awfully into 
her face. 

“What! YouT he said. 

She answered: “Aye! It’s me.*’ 

“Good heaven! I never thought ... I hadn’t the faintest 
idea.” 

“I knew you,’’ she said without emotion, neither lifting voice 
nor eyes, but speaking perpetually to the wall. “At once. I 
knew your voice. Moment you spoke. And your walk. I saw 
you look at your watch. I knew who it was when vou crossed 
road.” 

“And you would have gone away! You would have let me 
go by without a word?’’ 

“I didn’t think you’d want to speak ti me.’’ 

For some reason, or for many reasons, his heart was beating 
violently. It smote his throat with such force as to shake the 
words from lips too impotent to hold them. And all the while, 
trembling in the grip of this profound emotion, he was acutely 
conscious of the flight of time. The train would be already 
due. Charlotte and her mother would be expecting him; 
alighted, it might even be. by now, and looking on all sides for 
his appearance with faces of increasing doubt and disappoint¬ 
ment. 

He said, with the breathlessness of a runner: 

“I must speak to you.” 

“Must you?’’ she enquired apathetically. 

“You know I must. There are many things I want to 


344 The Tree of the Garden 

know—things I have a right to know. But I am in a great 
hurry ...” He looked at his watch again and uttered a 
sound of consternation. “I have a train to meet. At once. 
I cannot stay. When may I see you?” 

She answered: “When you like.” 

“To-night?” 

“If you want.” 

Her apathy frightened him. The listlessness in her tones lent 
no conviction to the words she uttered; it seemed to be more 
the voice of a dreamer that spoke to him than of a conscious 
being. 

“Will you promise to meet me?” he insisted. “Will you 
give me your word to come back, if I go away now?” 

She answered: “If you want me to.” 

“And you promise solemnly to meet me?” 

Again she assented: “Aye, if you want me to.” 

“Where will you meet me?” 

“Anywhere you like. Here if you like, i’ same place. I’ll 
wait of you while you come back. Or outside station.” 

“Whereabouts are you living? In Hunmouth?” 

She gave him an address, and to make sure of it he drew 
out his card case and wrote it down. 

“Is that your true address?” 

“Yes.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“Aye. I’se telling you truth.” 

If Guy Openshaw had known his Hunmouth better, the 
name of the street might not have reassured him, but he re¬ 
peated the address without misgiving. Portentous whistles from 
the direction of the station spurred him sharply. 

“Outside the hotel entrance in Station Square,” he impressed 
upon the girl. “At half-past ten o’clock. I must see you. I 
shall be there. You promise?” 

“Aye, I promise.” 

Thrice he gave the rendezvous and extracted the same tone¬ 
less promise from the girl’s lips before at last he dared to leave 


345 


The Tree of the Garden 

her, partly running down the street to make up for lost time. 
As he ran he kept repeating the address just given him, or 
rather it continued to repeat itself inside his brain with 
mechanical persistence. And it was not he that ran; it was 
the other, earlier Guy Openshaw that tripped through dingy 
streets, filled with misgivings and perplexities, where, but a 
short while before, only the brightness of unclouded hope had 
shone. This chance encounter had dislocated all the limbs of 
happiness; had flung life out of joint. He moved in a state 
of tumult, half triumphant, half terrified. To-night he was to 
learn at last the answer to the riddle that had defied unravel- 
ment so long. At any cost the appointment made with Thurs¬ 
day Hardrip should be kept. That done, and the injury to his 
peace of mind repaired, he would go straight back to Charlotte 
Lattimer and make confession. What he learned should be 
divulged without reserve to her. Then, on a basis of perfect 
confidence and trust, they should devote themselves to the new 
and happier life together. 


3 

As he hurried into Station Square, the moon-like dial of the 
station clock showed close on a quarter past ten. Yesterday 
such a staring, ghostly reproachfulness would have dismayed 
him inexpressibly with the thought of a pledge broken. To¬ 
night, though it dismayed him too, dismay was merged in 
another, more exultant emotion. He had missed the first en¬ 
counter with them. By now they would be seated, Charlotte 
and her mother, in the Beatonthorpe train, seeking him dis¬ 
tractedly on all sides. Nevertheless, he waited some minutes 
more before hazarding approach to the platform barrier. Yes. 
The train to Beatonthorpe was gone, the ticket inspector told 
him. He turned away from his informant with the sort of 
dull resignation men experience when the die is cast and they 
know themselves committed to the irrevocable. The thing was 
done; there could be no escaping from it. To some extent it 
had been involuntary on his part; he found a certain comfort 


346 The Tree of the Garden 

to reflect on that. So for the present let him put this episode 
aside. The thought of Charlotte’s face wreathed in smiles of 
greeting; of Mrs. Lattimer’s voluble effusion, were repugnant 
at this juncture. He sought only to escape them. Smiles 
seemed insufferable to him now; his very lips resisted their 
dissimulation; they must inevitably have betrayed the change 
within him. Only one subject occupied his mind. He was 
to know! Within a few short minutes all perplexity was to be 
stripped away from that bewildering passage in his life. The 
enigma would be solved. He would comprehend, on equal 
terms, the nature of the thing called Destiny. 

But first of all he shut himself within a telephone box and 
rang through to his own home. It was his mother’s voice that 
answered him. 

“Guy!” 

“I thought I would ring you up, mother. I am so sorry. I 
have missed the train. When I got to the station ... it was 
just steaming out.” 

She interrupted him to ask: “Where’s Charlotte? And 
Mrs. Lattimer? Are you all together?” 

“No. I suppose they’re in the train. They’ll be home very 
shortly. I shall come by the eleven-twenty. Don’t trouble to 
sit up for me, please! If you ring through to the Gables, will 
you say how sorry I am. I could not help myself.” 

“Do you mean you haven’t seen them at all, Guy?” she asked 
incredulously. 

“Not yet, mother.” 

Her voice intoned: “Oh, Guy!” in modulated sorrow and 
reproach. “However did it happen, dear! What was it that 
stopped you?” 

He answered vaguely, albeit cheerfully, “There was a street 
accident ...” 

“An accident!” That word sufficed to awaken all her ener¬ 
gies at once. “Where! How! Guy! You are not hurt? 
Tell me you are quite safe. Where are you speaking from, 
dear?” 


The Tree of the Garden 347 

Dread surmises of hospitals devoured her, it was plain to 
hear, but he allayed his mother’s fears. The accident was noth¬ 
ing serious. He had only been concerned in it as a spectator. 
He was speaking from the station. “Good-bye, mother. Don’t 
worry,” he charged her. “And be sure and tell Charlotte and 
Mrs. Lattimer how frightfully sorry I am to have missed 
them.” 

She would have been only too willing to interrogate him 
further, he was aware; but he said “Good-bye” again, as if 
responding to her own voice, and put up the receiver. Already 
the hands of the platform clock pointed in ominous proximity 
to the half-hour, and he hastened through the hotel, agitated 
by nervous anticipation that was more than half a fear of dis¬ 
appointment. Why had he ever let the girl go! Bitter experi¬ 
ence should have taught him by this time her utter independa¬ 
bility. Left to her own inclinations who knows if she might 
not repent the promise wrung from her too compliant lips? 
She had been prepared to let him pass her by without the least 
effort to restrain him. Such an act alone, after all she owed 
him of remorse and explanation, seemed inexplicable. The 
address? Glibly given it had been, without reluctance or 
delay, but what value attached to it in sober truth? The 
tension of misgiving grew insufferable. Why (he charged 
himself)—why had he not forgone this paltry subterfuge of 
conscience that brought him to the station for the fulfillment 
of a vow already broken, and made knowledge his first and only 
duty? Passing through the hotel lounge, urged much less by 
hope than by the mortifying certitude of failure, he did not 
note two seated female figures whom his appearance galvan¬ 
ised at once into excited movements of recognition. 

“Goodness! Why there’s actually Guy!” Mrs. Lattimer 
exclaimed, shaking ecstatic head-feathers and holding up an 
edge of fur. “Wherever has he been! Whatever has he been 
doing! He doesn’t even see me. Guy! Guy! . . . Why, I 
declare; He’s positively going out again. Quick, Charlotte. 
Run after him. Call him. Do stop him, some how!” 


34 § 


The Tree of the Garden 


4 

At first, emerging from the brightness of the hotel and 
casting too anxious eyes about him, Guy Openshaw declared: 
“She is not there!” His heart sank despondently, though 
thumping still in the last throes of despairing hope. After all 
this falsity and sacrifice! . . . 

And then he saw her, remote from the portico; immobile 
and unassertive; a vague blot of shadow by the railings. He 
advanced towards her quickly, with a violent revulsion of feel¬ 
ing from despondency to reassurance. She was there. She 
had kept her word; she had justified a conduct otherwise made 
vile and inexcusable. 

To have accosted such a figure, so suggestively withdrawn 
to the dim outskirts of light, where definition grows blurred 
and the shadows seem to compromise all shapes that have re¬ 
course to them, would once upon a time have shocked his better 
feelings. But now his eagerness for knowledge knew no shame. 
No thought of prudence or propriety deterred him. That a 
young man on the threshold of contracting marriage with the 
only daughter of the late White Lattimer should be exchang¬ 
ing whispers on the fringe of darkness with a promiscuous 
female shape was a defamatory act, he knew. It wronged him¬ 
self; it smirched the purity of Charlotte Lattimer. The 
thought troubled him, indeed, but its consideration lay external 
to the will. Only knowledge counted now. At all costs to 
the outward features of appearance he must know. 

“You have kept your word!” he said to Thursday Hardrip 
almost breathlessly, in a low and urgent voice. 

She answered: “Didn’t you want me to?” 

“I was afraid you might not,” he responded. “I want to 
talk with you. There are a lot of things I want to ask you. 
Where can we go? We can’t stay here.” He nearly added: 
“People might see us. They might recognise me.” But con¬ 
sideration for his partner checked the words in time. 

Curiously enough (himself was strangely conscious of it), 


349 


The Tree of the Garden 

he entertained no anger now towards this girl. Away from 
her in times past, shut up in an uncertainty that seemed im¬ 
penetrable, asking and re-asking those perpetual questions to 
which his troubled brain could give no answer, he had experi¬ 
enced intermittent anger in his heart that she should have 
heaped this undeserved suffering upon him. Anger, after all, 
is but shorthand for ignorance; men entertain anger when 
they fail to understand. Perfect wisdom has no need of anger; 
for wisdom knows, and, knowing, is at peace within itself. 
Now that he stood side by side with her once more, all his hard 
feelings drifted from him like May mist. He sharpened no 
reproaches. His mood was but a conscious human sadness, 
seeking out of the knowledge she could give him, balm for its 
bruises. Whatever had been this girl’s offending against him 
in the past, it had profited her little. Nothing in her accents 
or demeanour bespoke a happiness acquired at his cost. 

“Where can we go?” he asked again, for the perpetual move¬ 
ment of figures that in their passage seemed to peer intently at 
them, the constant to-and-fro of cabs and vehicles, the rattle 
of mail vans and the swinging of the hotel doors, made (to Guy 
Openshaw’s tense consciousness) their immobility feel sinister. 

“Parks is closed ...” the girl responded after a pause. “We 
can walk as far as pier. Or you can come back with me,” she 
suggested with hesitation. 

“With you?” he asked dubiously. “Is it far away? Can we 
be quite alone?” 

She answered: “If you like, we can. It’s only two or three 
minutes’ walk. I have a room.” She read disinclination in 
his silence, and added: “Maybe you wouldn’t care. Nay . . . 
better not. It’s not a place for such as you. I oughtn’t tiv ’a 
named it.” 

Partly through chivalry, partly through shame—chivalry 
that sought to rise superior to shame, and shame that struggled 
to be chivalry—he closed impulsively with the suggestion, 
because his reluctance had betrayed itself to her. 

“I will come with you,” he said. And though he regretted 


3So 


The Tree of the Garden 

his decision the moment he had taken it, he fell into step with 
the girl beside him, and they moved away together. 

All at once it seemed to him as if Time’s glass had been 
inverted; its sands, long still, began to run again; slowly at 
first, though quickening ever, and giving to old memories and 
emotions the vital continuity that made the past and present 
one. Unconsciously they dropped, George Hardrip’s lass and 
he, into their respective attitudes of bygone days. The old 
uneasy feeling crept upon him, of embarrassment and con¬ 
straint. He had used all his daring to achieve this moment; 
had stopped at nothing for its consummation. Yet now that 
the girl walked by his side, his lips shirked to make beginning; 
temporised with phrases, saying, ‘How strange this meeting; 
how long it seemed since last they saw each other.’ 

“I’ve seen you” she said. “Once.” 

“Seen me?” he asked, incredulously. “Where?” 

She answered: “In Royal Street. You were with a young 
lady. A fair young lady. Is that the one you’re going to 
marry?” 

Again he noticed, with an irresistible stirring of his pity, 
the curious dispassion of the girl’s voice. To call the quality 
indifference would be to misdefine it. It was no personal in¬ 
difference to him, but to Destiny; not deficiency of interest so 
much as a docile acceptance of the ruling of the power that 
decrees all. Fate, by the sound of her voice, was acknowledged 
as a force too strong for her. She had no animosity against 
Fate. All things, good or bad, emanated from Fate’s most 
arbitrary hands. Why seek to quarrel vainly with decrees 
beyond control? And on her lips there lay no bitterness; no 
sting of envy; no words of malice sharpened by adversity with 
which the vanquished in life’s battle seek to hold their victors 
still at bay and wound the joy they cannot share. 

He said, hesitating: “I might be . . . ”—with a troubled 
thought of the train that should be nearing Beatonthorpe, and 
of the two women his conscience supposed to be in it. 

“Where were you?” 


The Tree of the Garden 351 

“Across street,” she told him. “I was afraid you’d see me. 
But you never looked. You were busy talking to her. She’s 
very good looking, isn’t she?” 

The tribute offered by some lips might have made his lover’s 
vanity elate. From her, all wrapped in humbleness, it hurt 
him. She seemed to accept elimination from his life without 
the least enquiry or protest. The severance between them had 
been of her own seeking, to be sure, and in a way (no doubt) 
this tone of perfect uncomplaint was to be taken as her con¬ 
fession of fault and of remorse. She offered her offending to 
his castigation as the faithful dog creeps to accept chastisement 
from an injured master’s hand. Now and again in walking— 
for all they stepped studiously apart—their elbows touched. 
These soft collisions with the substance of so much past misery, 
with the very flesh and blood of what he had so deeply suffered 
once upon a time, set up within Guy Openshaw curious cross 
currents of emotion. Once, his memory recalled incredulously, 
he had had that very arm around his neck. Those lips, held 
slightly lowered and averted, had once known intimate union 
with his. And emotion has a memory of her own. A hundred 
dormant feelings rose one after another out of their secret 
lurking-places in the darkness of his being, protesting: “I 
was alive once—until she slew me.” “Don’t you remember 
me, Guy Openshaw? I am the self-same feeling that came to 
you upon the cliffs near Dimmlesea ...” “I am the feeling 
that crept over you in the lonely sickness of your tent, when 
you stretched out arms, praying that your desires might have 
warm substance and a shape. ...” 

Aye! Feelings that were half forgotten scents, and sounds 
recalled; that were stars twinkling up in heaven, above the 
darkness of the girl’s hair; and winds blown salt from the sea; 
and raindrops pattering on warm dust like feet that ran, fling¬ 
ing up a vast, vague, suffocating, powdery fragrance; and 
kisses, frightened of their own temerity, insatiable for what 
they fed on. 

No! he told himself, recoiling from such memories with 


352 


The Tree of the Garden 

sudden horror. This portion of the past, at least, was closed 
against him now. Love, honour, loyalty—all revolted at it. He 
was not here to rekindle the bygone with brands of infamy and 
shame. He was here to stamp out its last embers; to know 
the fire dead and cold; to go back to Beatonthorpe with a heart 
purified and a conscience at rest. And walking by the girl’s 
side in silence, he fixed his thoughts on Charlotte Lattimer; 
clung to her dear, protective face as if it were an amulet. 


5 

All at once the girl stopped before a house with the brief 
intimation: “We’re there.” He knew not whither she had 
led him, walking all the while in a mist of introspection; lost 
to everything external save the sense of her contiguity and 
guidance; but he divined a street obscure and unfrequented. 
Sparse lights shone from windows here and there; naked lights, 
divested of illusion, staring bleakly through uncurtained panes; 
candle-lights enmeshed in shabby curtains like moths in webs; 
incandescent gaslights exposing ruthlessly the ravages in wry 
Venetian blinds. She opened the door with a latch key and 
ushered Guy Openshaw into a passage-entrance unlit by any 
lamp. Both of them, as by one instinct, hushed their voices 
and trod with circumspection. “You’ll maybe find it dark,” 
she told him in an undertone. “Let me take your hand.” The 
contact of that hand to guide him made his heart beat again; 
suffused him with a flood of memories resisted, and sent his 
thoughts to Charlotte Lattimer to supplicate her aid and par¬ 
don. An unfamiliar warm odour, as if it emanated from an 
oven too constantly engaged on the preparation of coarse and 
questionable dishes, filled the passage. To Guy Openshaw’s 
sensitive nostrils it smelt sickly and suspect, making him repent 
afresh his facile acquiescence in the girl’s proposal. Never be¬ 
fore had he entered such a house, and fine natures punctiliously 
brought up are susceptible to the least variation in smell or 
temperature; the least divergence from type and standard. 


353 


The Tree of the Garden 

His lungs resisted the strange hotness of the air imposed on 
them, as it rushed to take advantage of the open door and make 
escape into the street; and his soul stood momentarily still, 
abashed and shrinking from its own imprudence. 

“Mind the stairs,” the girl's voice warned him. “Put your 
hand here. There’s bannisters. It’s all straight now while we 
reach the landing.” 

As though made apprehensive by the sound of voices and 
Guy’s first stumbling footstep on the stair, a door suddenly 
opened at the passage-end and let out a flood of yellow light 
with the shadow of a head embedded in it. A frizzling sound 
was audible. 

“Who’s that?” the head enquired sharply. 

“It’s me,” said the girl. The two voices exchanged brief 
words whose purport was lost upon Guy Openshaw; they only 
lent fuel to his discomfort and made him more conscious of his 
own shame. “It’s all right,” the girl assured him. “Keep 
close to me.” 

The colloquy was over; the protruding head and yellow 
lamplight disappeared together, cut off at its source, it seemed, 
and the sound of frying grew instantly remote. Guy Open¬ 
shaw and his companion began to mount the stairs. The thin 
carpet underneath their feet accompanied them no higher than 
the landing before it gave way to boards. From doors on vari¬ 
ous sides of them there crept a drone of voices muffled and 
obscure. On the second floor a vehement dispute was being 
waged between two disputants—male and female. What they 
claimed or contradicted was unintelligible to Guy Openshaw’s 
shocked hearing, though certain words rang out with awful 
clarity and frequence. The woman’s volubility appalled him. 
Until this moment he had never deemed such passion possible 
to womanhood, or such velocity of tongue. Words seemed 
indistinguishable in their continuous outflow from her lips; 
revilement poured from her unchecked, like water from a burst 
pipe. From time to time the man’s voice succeeded in stifling 


354 The Tree of the Garden 

the torrent with a word, but the outburst never ceased; the 
breach in self-continence appeared to be irreparable. 

“Don’t listen to them,” the girl exhorted Guy Openshaw 
apologetically. “They’ve been like that most nights at this 
time, sin’ I came. You get used to it.” 

They mounted another flight of stairs, lit on the last landing 
by a solitary bead of blue flame, hovering precariously over a 
naked gas-jet, and by the gleam issuing from an open door that 
closed with furtive caution as they passed it. Through a door 
beyond this—that she unlocked with a second key—the girl led 
Guy Openshaw into her own room. Immediately above the 
one in which the quarrel was proceeding, it must have been, for 
now they could hear the commingled voices below, rising and 
falling in anger’s endless cadence. 

It was not a small room, Guy Openshaw perceived, when 
at last the girl struck a match and lit the gas; and it presented 
evidences of a certain shabby comfort. In one corner, by the 
window, stood her bed, covered with an emaciated eider quilt. 
There was a cracked cheval-glass, ostensibly on its last legs, 
propped against a second wall and patched profusely with 
brown paper. A round table occupied the centre of the room. 
The fireplace displayed a gas-stove for heating, and a supple¬ 
mentary ring-burner on which a saucepan stood. The wall¬ 
paper, to be sure, was dark with age, and above the gas bracket 
a blackened circle spread gloom over the ceiling. But there 
were bright bows and garish ribbons introduced that forced 
their artificial gaiety on this sombre room, and taunted rather 
than relieved its natural depression. 

The girl drew forward an arm-chair, rolling on uneven cas¬ 
tors, and with constrained politeness begged Guy Openshaw to 
take a seat. She, meanwhile, removed her hat and coat, rolled 
up her cotton gloves, and—as though scarce knowing what 
further act politeness might impose on her—stood in an awk¬ 
ward posture of respect with folded hands. 

For the first time, albeit tentatively, Guy Openshaw took 
stock of her. Her face showed little alteration, and yet a great 


355 


The Tree of the Garden 

deal. He believed there lay paint upon her cheeks, but it had 
been applied perfunctorily, without conviction, and it seemed 
only to fade their freshness and give the flesh a semblance of 
fatigue. The eyes were tired and joyless, and the mouth so 
dispirited that one might think the last smile had been wrung 
from it months ago, leaving nothing but the dull acceptance of 
laughterless reality behind. The dumb expression on her face, 
the constrained attitude of her deference pained him. He said: 
“Sit down . . . ”—marvelling at the effort requisite to say 
two simple words. She looked about her for a moment, crossed 
the scantly covered floor, and seated herself on the bedside. 
The action in its listlessness expressed something akin to a sigh. 
For awhile, the prey to indescribable emotion, Guy Openshaw 
could only look at her. Not with a look of scrutiny or hard 
interrogation, but with a shrinking look that half sought not 
to see too clearly; to wrap her loosely in the vagueness of his 
outer vision until such time as sight might overcome its first 
embarrassment, and use itself without constraint. This was 
Thursday Hardrip. This was Thursday Hardrip, some voice 
within him seemed over and over again to say. 

“Why did you do it?” he asked at last, with mouth and 
lips grown strangely dry. Her two hands lay unheeded in 
her lap, bringing back irresistible memories of the Whinsett 
cowshed; of moments w T hen she had sat just so upon the milk¬ 
ing stool, listening to his rapt assurances in an attitude of such 
profound inanimation that it frightened him. 

“I don’t know,” she answered, in her troublingly untroubled 
voice. “I suppose it had ti be.” 

“I thought we trusted each other too well for that,” he 
said; and she responded: “I told you all time how it would 
be. I knew no good would come of it.” 

The words involved him in surprise. Her acquiescence was 
like soft and yielding soil that sinks beneath the foot and 
sucks it down into a deeper perplexity. 

“Told me?” he said. “How do you mean?” 

“Lots o' times,” she answered simply. “Day you went 


356 The Tree of the Garden 

away. I said then you’d never come back. Something told 
me you wouldn’t. I begged of you i’ train not ti let your 
mother know. I said . . . once ye got back ti Beatonthorpe 
and told her ... I shouldn’t see you again. I knew very 
well I shouldn’t. I don’t blame ye. As like as not I should 
’a done same if I’d been you.” 

“But I did come back,” he protested, stung to energy by 
the inference behind her words. “I said I would, and I kept 
my promise.” 

“Did ye?” the girl commented in her curious, acceptive 
voice. 

“Did I? You must know I did. I wrote to you. I wrote 
to you twice. I begged you to send me just one word.” No 
expression of remembrance lit the girl’s face. An awful doubt 
crept over him. “You don’t mean to say you never got my 
letters ?” 

She shook her head. 

“I never got any letters. If I had ’a done I should have 
remembered. I was always looking out for them at one time. 
Did you send them with your friend ?” 

He said: “My friend wrote one of them for me. I couldn’t 
write. I was laid up with a broken arm. I told you all about 
that. But the letter was sent to you by post.” 

“I remember your friend coming,” she said. 

“Remember my friend coming?” he asked, bewildered. 
“What friend?” 

“Him you sent to see me.” 

“But I never sent any friend to see you.” 

“Didn’t you?” her untroubled voice replied. “I thought 
you did. He said you did.” 

The solid substance of reality quaked beneath Guy Open- 
shaw’s feet. The world turned all at once to shrinking flesh 
and blood. Solids became as fluids, and rocks on a sudden 
seemed as shifting sands. 

“Are you speaking seriously?” he put to her, “or are you 


The Tree of the Garden 357 

trying to mislead me? Who was it that came to you? When 
did he come?” 

“He was a gentleman,” the girl replied. “Like you. Only 
older. He said you’d sent him. He knew my name, and all 
about me.” 

“Older?” Guy Openshaw pondered with a face of utter 
perplexity. “And said I’d sent him? What had I sent him 
for? Did he say?” 

“Because you’d changed your mind,” the girl explained. 
“You said things was different. You had your mother to 
consider, and she wouldn’t hear of you having aught ti do wi’ 
me. I wasn’t ti write or try ti speak to you again. I was 
to forget ye.” 

6 

He started from his seat with a countenance of horror. 
“Thursday! Tell me. I must know. I haven’t come here 
to reproach you. I only want to know the truth. Is this 
true? Will you give me your solemn word it’s true?” 

She said: “For aught I know, it’s true. I’se only saying 
what he told me as well as I can remember. I can’t give 
you his words. I couldn’t put it like what he put it. But he 
said I must give you up, and I said I knew I must, and I’d 
been expecting it all while. Didn’t you know he’d come?” 

“I ?” He uttered the word with something like a groan. 
“Never! Never! I sent nobody. I can’t understand it. I 
can’t believe it. It’s like a frightful dream.” 

“Perhaps somebody else sent him,” the girl suggested. 
“Somebody who knew all about it. He wouldn’t ’a come 
wi’oot being sent by somebody. Why should he? Mayhap 
your mother sent him.” The mere suggestion, made without 
bitterness, wrung a protesting negative from him. 

“My mother! My mother would never have stooped to 
such a thing. My mother did not even know. If she had 
known she would have spoken to me. She could not have 
concealed her knowledge of it from me for a moment. But 


35 ^ The Tree of the Garden 

she never knew. I never told her—until I’d been to Whin- 
sett to look for you.” 

“Was that after I’d left?” she asked simply. 

He said: “I could get no answer to my letters. I didn’t 
know what had happened to you. I went one day to try and 
find out. You had gone. Nobody could tell me where.” 

“Did ye see my grandfather?” 

“Yes.” 

“Ti speak to?” 

“Yes.” 

“What did he say? Was he vexed?” 

“I don’t know what he said. I didn’t care. He said lots 
of things. But I only wanted to find you. You don’t know 
how sick and miserable I was.” He began to pace up and 
down the room, tortured afresh by memory of that dreadful 
time; the girl watching him meanwhile, curious and unper¬ 
turbed. 

“I can’t understand,” he cried at last. “The man who came 
to see you! Who was he? What was he like?” All sorts of 
ragged and disconnected suspicions blew, like sky-wrack, tu¬ 
multuously across his brain, obscuring thought and baffling 
reason. “Tell me all about him. Everything you can re¬ 
member.” 

She told him without emotion. How she had awaited word 
from him with growing disbelief of his return. How the 
gentleman had come one afternoon in quest of her, professing 
to be sent by him. “Leastways . . .” the girl was scrupulous to 
add, “I understood him to say so. I may ’a been mistaken. 
But he knew all about you, and where you lived, and you 
going out wi’ me, an’ wanting ti wed me.” She reduced all 
the incident of that prodigious visit to a dry formula. She 
had walked with the stranger after tea, “Talking o’ you and 
other things. After awhile he begun ti mek love ti me. I 
didn’t care. I didn’t stop him. I thought it was all owered 
betwixt us, and you were done wi’ me. I didn’t much care 
what happened. We stopped out ... a long while. I let him 


359 


The Tree of the Garden 

have his way wi’ me. It seemed easiest. When we got 
back it was late. Doors was all locked, an’ my grandfather 
had ta’en his-sen upstairs ti bed. I threw summut again 
window and called of him. After a time he came ti window 
and asked who it was. I said it was me. He said ‘Who’s 
me?’ and I said ‘You know who it is. It’s Thursday/ He 
said I was a liar. ‘Thursday Hardrip’s in her bed—or should 
be!’ he told me. ‘An’ syke as you may lig ootside while morn¬ 
ing.’ He wouldn’t let me in, an’ shut window and went 
his ways back ti bed. I said to mysen: ‘I’ll never pass thruff 
yon doorway again. I’ll gan. I’ll leave him.’ Gentleman was 
waiting o’ me at gate. All that night we stopped i’ barn to¬ 
gether. Next morning, as soon as it was light, I set off to 
Dimmlesea. He went an’ all, but not wi’ me. He said it was 
best not. He gave me money to get lodgings with i’ Hun- 
mouth, and told me where I should be like to meet with them. 
After that he used to come an’ stop wi’ me at nights.” 

“At nights!” Guy Openshaw exclaimed with a shocked face. 

She said: “Yes! He’d stop wi’ me while morning. He 
used ti go away before streets got busy. But I didn’t care 
for him. He didn’t care for me. I wasn’t good enough fear 
him. He said if ever I tried to speak to you or write to you 
again, or trouble you in any way, it would be -worse for me. 
I don’t know why. I never thought of troubling you. . . . 
After a time he begun to say I should have to think of 
getting work, or doing something for a living. He asked 
me how I’d like to go to Canada or somewhere. It was lovely 
out there, he said. He offered to pay for me going out, and 
to give me money for myself beside. He seemed ti have plenty 
o’ money, an’ he was always generous. But I didn’t care for 
him, nor him for me. So one night I left him.” 

“And after you’d left him,” Guy Openshaw prompted her, 
wrapped up in the awful interest of the story, “what became 
of you then?” 

The dreadful narrative went on, broken by Guy Open- 
shaw’s occasional interjections of protest and horror. At 


360 The Tree of the Garden 

whiles it seemed so montrously unreal that the girl might 
rather have been reciting some dreadful chapter from a book, 
whose awfulness was intensified by the level, unembarrassed 
voice that shirked nothing, palliated nothing, exaggerated noth¬ 
ing. No effort was made by the narrator to lift her virtue 
out of the mire of its environment; to justify her conduct by 
the least appeal to pity. She viewed herself from a remote, 
impersonal standpoint, bewildering to the subjective nature of 
her listener, trained from childhood to regard all sinful facts as 
exercises for righteousness to work on. Abhorrence of men’s 
acts she expressed not at all. She accepted the sordid circum¬ 
stances of her own unhappy life as the normal envelope of 
human action. Men did these things because they were men; 
she suffered their inevitable consequences because she was a 
woman. She could only bear witness to life as she knew it; 
its explanation she neither sought nor offered. That was for 
others, wiser, better, more fortunately circumstanced than she. 

And as she spoke, Guy Openshaw listened with open eyes and 
shocked protestive ears. All these dreadful things had hap¬ 
pened to her in the few brief months since he took leave of 
Whinsett. All these things were happening whilst he put 
the thought of her behind him and dwelt unconcerned in a 
new world of happiness with Charlotte Lattimer. Yes; and 
all these dreadful happenings seemed attributable, in some 
degree, to him. He was responsible. As he paced to and 
fro within the girl’s chamber, now fitting his feet to the 
almost obliterated pattern on the shabby carpet, now measuring 
the splintered space between the floorboard seams, the sense 
of his responsibility weighed like lead. Who had instigated 
this wicked plot to part them ? Who had visited the girl in his 
name? By whose authority, and for what reason? He could 
no more conjecture the truth than Charlotte Lattimer when 
she watched his earlier movements with fury and resentment. 

“But who was it?” he demanded, breaking into her narra¬ 
tive at last. “Who was it that came to see you? Where did 
he come from?” 


The Tree of the Garden 361 

She said: “I think from Beatonthorpe. I won’t be sure. 

I understood him to say he lived i’ same place as you. I’se 
heard since he was a lawyer.” 

“A lawyer . . He began to tremble once again. Mis¬ 
givings on the very verge of certainty rolled all about him. 
“Should you know his name?” 

“I don’t know. I might. I think I’se heard it. He didn’t 
tell me. It was another name he told me.” 

“Was it . . .”—he paused, deterred by a feeling of awful 
responsibility; for the consequences now were terrible to think 
of. “Was it . . . Lattimer?” 

“It might be. It was some funny name like that.” 

He described Barnard Lattimer to her in detail. The 
brown hair, the fresh complexion, the clear grey eyes, the 
straight nose, the round chin with the deep cleft in it, the voice, 
the manner. 

“It was him,” said the girl. “I’se seen him once go into 
those offices i’ Bridge Street. He wore a big ring on his 
finger for stamping letters with. Is it the same you mean?” 

Guy Openshaw hesitated, and answered slowly, “Yes.” 

“Is he a friend of yours?” 

“I thought so—until now.” 

“And you didn’t really send him to me?” 

“Never! Never! I give you my word of honour, Thursday. 
To think! . . .” His lips were so thronged with the things 
he might have said that all at once, on the brink of saying 
them, he broke off and plunged instead into the swift intensity 
of his own thoughts; contended with their silent current 
as if he had been a swimmer. 

Barnard Lattimer! Barnard Lattimer had done this evil 
deed. The brother of the girl to whom he was betrothed; 
to whose memory he had so urgently clung for strength and 
sustenance to-night. And if the man had done this thing it 
could only be because Charlotte had betrayed him. Yes! She 
had divulged his secret. One by one the dread corollaries of 
conviction dropped into their places, fitting indubitably. She 


362 The Tree of the Garden 

had betrayed him. The letters confided to her care had been 
suppressed. These two had abused the helplessness of a sick 
man; taken advantage of a weak and inoffensive girl. They 
had wronged him, robbed him, fooled him, lied to him— 
lie after lie. Indignation and anger, loathing of treachery, 
and compassion for suffering innocence rose in his brain like 
thick smoke, blinding him. For a space as he walked to and 
fro in the suffocating density of his emotions, he lost sight 
of the girl seated silently on her bed. He lost sight utterly 
of time and of externals, striving only to subdue the thoughts 
that filled him; to fight his way through all their turbulence 
to some place of clarid thinking where judgment might be 
free and undisturbed. If this were true—and he did not doubt 
it—if the girl had been torn from her faith in him by fraud, 
what course of action was incumbent on him now? What 
steps must be taken to repair the past? All at once he could 
no longer bear to think of Charlotte Lattimer. It was as 
if his love of her had been but part of this shameless treachery 
practised on him; as if it had been stripped away with all the 
vile deception interposed between himself and truth. Her face 
seemed but a symbol of falsehood and deceit. When he re¬ 
membered what had passed between them; the confidence he 
had reposed in her; the love she took from him; the love 
herself professed . . . and all this while! Oh, it was mon¬ 
strous! Unpardonable! He could not bear to think of her. 
He could not bear to think of her. 

On a sudden he pulled out his watch with a sort of mechan¬ 
ical alarm; read the hour from its fateful dial. Nearly half 
past eleven. The last train to Beatonthorpe was gone without 
him, like its predecessor. 

“I have missed my train,” he said in a low voice, and 
replaced his watch in silence. The girl, seated on the edge 
of the flattened coverlet with her two hands still lying unre¬ 
garded in her lap, heard the portentous news without emotion. 

“Have you,” she commented. After an interval she said, 
in the same impassive voice, “What shall you do now?” 


The Tree of the Garden 363 

“I don’t know,” he replied, his voice expressive of a trouble 
now too deep for care. “I can’t think.” 

She said, looking down upon her hands, and not at him: 
“Stay here . . . wi’ me.” 

He heard the words, for all they were but whispered. 
Perhaps, too, he understood their import. But he waved 
vague hands as if he neither heard nor understood, and began 
to pace the floor again, seeking in his mind some clue to con¬ 
duct. What must be done now? How must these harsh 
realities be met? 

Charlotte Lattimer? What duty did he owe her after this? 
None! Unless she could prove her perfect innocence in what 
had happened, he would not even own her as a friend. And 
whilst he submitted thus to the full force of indignation that 
swept him, planning schemes of vengeance with the same fury 
that Charlotte Lattimer did, he heard the girl’s voice speaking 
to him once again. 

“You’ll stop wi’ me now, won’t you?” she asked, without 
seduction, without persuasiveness, but with a supreme sim¬ 
plicity of appeal that made morality stumble like the blind. 

He cried: “No, no. You don’t know what you are saying. 
I cannot. It is impossible. You forget ... I must be going.” 

She asked: “Where to?” 

“I don’t know. Home, I suppose. I may take a cab. I 
can walk.” 

The hopelessness of the suggestions convicted him as he 
made them. This terrific discovery had deprived him of all 
purpose, of all initiative. Why go home? Why go anywhere? 
do anything?—whilst yet he knew not what it was that must 
be done. There was a duty owing to this girl not less than 
to himself. He sank down upon the chair in a posture of 
despondency and irresolution. 

“I will sit here awhile,” he said. 

“Don’t leave me,” she said. “Stop where you are. You can 
have bed, if you like. I’ll sleep i’ chair. It’s all same to me.” 

He did not say “No”—he did not say “Yes;” albeit there 


364 The Tree of the Garden 

was that in him (he knew) that would not tolerate this girl’s 
desertion now; that would not for a moment countenance 
the leaving of her in the midst of all these dangers. He said 
simply: “I can rest here,” and made pretence to readjust 
himself to comfort. The words, he was aware, were weak and 
inconclusive, like all the thoughts that held possession of him. 
He dared not leave her, yet he must not stay. He would 
protect her from all further infamy, and yet remembrance 
of his mother’s face made sojourn here impossible. She would 
be awaiting him at home, staring at the impassive clock with 
awful eyes. For her would be nor rest nor respite till her 
son returned. And still he sat, devoured by his own thoughts. 

Something swept into his brain like the misty sickness that 
enswounds the moon on summer evenings; like the tremendous 
urges that had shocked him on the night that he and this 
same girl lay lip to lip beneath the dripping hawthorn branches, 
whilst the rain boiled and seethed upon the soil on every side, 
and the blue lightning convulsed her eyes with its continuous 
flashes. And all at once—whether impelled by pity or by 
desire of her Guy Openshaw knew not—he moved impulsively 
to where she sat, and clasped her in his arms, and kissed her 
with the fierce contrition that cries aloud for pardon. 

“You poor girl!” he said. “You poor girl! Forgive me for 
all that I have brought upon you.” 

Her head fell back inertly, bringing up the girl’s part-opened 
mouth, like the lips of a chalice. No word, no sigh, no sound 
came from it. He kissed it blindly, and her eyes—glimmering 
without response or speculation. With every kiss his lips 
besought forgiveness of this body so deeply wronged and in¬ 
jured in his name. 

“Forgive me, Thursday. Say you forgive me.” There was 
a feeble stir in the unresisting limbs his ardour pinioned. He 
relaxed his hold of her and her two arms disengaged themselves 
and slowly sought his neck. Her face fell against his. She 
did not weep, but the tears welled unheeded from her eyes, 
and dripped upon his cheek, dank and cold; tears of slow 


The Tree of the Garden 365 

self-pity at long length thawed from the frozen effigy of 
sorrow. So for awhile they stayed, steeped in the mutual 
comfort of each other’s nearness, dissolving the trouble of the 
past in an embrace that took no cognisance of time, but 
sought only in itself a sanctuary from Time’s persecutions. 


7 

The hornet-like hum of distant trams; the ring of the 
trolley-wheels against electric cables; the scream of protesting 
flanges against the curvature of rails; the vibratory buzz 
from deep, bass steamers; the clomp of footsteps and shrill 
street whistles, defining themselves out of a grotesque web of 
unreality, became at last the inescapable prison bars of grim, 
hard fact behind which Guy Openshaw awoke on a sudden 
with an overwhelming sense of consternation and alarm. He 
tried to burst through the fetters of environment in turn, 
as he had burst through the bondage of tyrannic slumber ; 
as though the outer integument of circumstance were no more 
than the thin envelope of a dream; to go on awakening through 
successive stages of divestment, until he should emerge from 
the last illusive tissue into the perfect consciousness of self; 
into the life untroubled and harmonious from which he seemed 
so monstrously remote. 

All the constituents of his being seemed pulled apart like 
the disconnected members of a piece of mechanism, having now 
no intelligible relation with one another. Here in one part 
of consciousness lurked shame; here, in another, lay com¬ 
passion; in a third, despondency; in a fourth, pride. With 
each successive moment a new identity was born in him, 
alternately despairing and exultant; superb and humble; 
righteous and degraded. 

8 

A clock, tolling out the inexorable hour from a neigh¬ 
bouring church, claimed and riveted his attention. The slow 


366 The Tree of the Garden 

strokes multiplied relentlessly, each one shaking his under¬ 
standing with concussive horror as he counted. 

Eight . . . Nine . . . Ten . . . 

A shudder of incredible alarm went through him. Was it 
possible that there could be another? 

It fell without remorse. Eleven o’clock. He uttered an 
exclamation and struggled from the girl’s arms. 

“Eleven! Eleven o’clock! Is it eleven o’clock?” 

“Aye . . .” she said. “It must be. I knew time was getting 
late.” 

She slid from the bed and drew up the crooked blind on its 
uneven rollers. Down below in the dingy street Guy Open- 
shaw saw dreadful evidences of human animation. Seated on 
the upper sill of the house opposite, a woman cleaned a win¬ 
dow, her eyes preoccupied with the life beneath. A coal cart 
rumbled by. Somebody w T histled the shrill snatches of a music- 
hall song. For Guy Openshaw all these things possessed a 
special horror of their own. He would have to run the 
gauntlet of this shocking street. He would be seen emerging 
from the shabby house-door. Eyes would challenge and in¬ 
terrogate him. Shame and sickness returned. What had he 
done! To what depths of degeneration had his passions sunk 
him! 

“You aren’t angry with me?” the girl pleaded. “You aren’t 
angry wi’ me for keeping you? I heard clock strike. Aye! 
I heard it strike twice before, but I didn’t dare ti tell ye. 
Say you’re not vexed wi’ me.” 

“It is my own fault,” he said, magnanimously. “No! I 
am not vexed with you, Thursday.” 

She accepted his assurance dubiously; displayed contrition 
by a slavish solicitude for his needs. Here was water, if he 
cared to wash. Water was cold—could he bide it cold? She 
would boil some for him if he wished. And here was soap. 
She’d bought it only day before. Nobody had used it but her. 
Did he mind soap she’d washed with? Here was a clean 
towel. No one had ever used that. Before he could realise 


The Tree of the Garden 367 

her intention she was seated on the bedside with one of his 
boots in her lap, which she brushed deftly with a blacking 
brush taken from the wash-stand drawer. To see her occupied 
upon such menial duties in his service hurt him. He cried: 
“No no, Thursday. Don’t do that, I won’t let you.” 

She asked surprisedly: “Why not?” 

He said: “I can’t bear to have you wait on me like that. 
Don’t.” 

“I’se used tiv it,” she told him. “I do my own. I like 
doing it. Let me do these for you . . . Will you. Aye, do!” 

He had taken hold restrainingly of the hand that plied the 
brush, but he surrendered to the supplication in her eyes, 
albeit reluctantly and with a pain at heart. She finished both 
the boots and laid them at his feet. 

“They’re bright now,” she said. “What lovely ones they 
are. They polish beautiful.” 

He looked at his collar with concern. To him it showed 
disreputable; even dirty. And down below the watchful street 
was waiting, biding its time, complacent in the knowledge that 
no escape from its scrutiny was possible. Thoughts of the 
dreadful door downstairs through which he must emerge 
into the outer world at last made courage cringe. 

And all the while the half-draped body of the girl revolved 
in services about him, despite his protestations. She set a 
little kettle to boil upon the ring-burner; produced sugar and 
condensed milk from a cupboard, and butter in a coverlet 
of grease-proof paper, and a loaf of bread. By the time he 
was washed and dressed a cup of tea awaited him. He took 
it with demur, drinking to please her. There was warmth, if 
little comfort in the liquid swallowed. But food he could not 
touch, even in answer to solicitation. Bread would have 
choked him. He laid the cup down, bracing himself for the 
coming call upon his fortitude. And first of all saying: “Before 
I go . . he drew out his chain purse. At the mere sight 
of it the girl shrank away from him with a movement of 
terror and repugnance. 


368 The Tree of the Garden 

“No, no!” she said, putting up her hands before her eyes. 
“Not from you, I wouldn’t. I won’t. Never.” 

He said: “But listen, Thursday. Listen.” 

“Nay!” she cried, “I won’t listen ... to that. Don’t 
shame me. I won’t tek money fro’ you. I’se too much pride.” 

And whilst he still sought words with which to make his 
meaning plain to her and overcome the girl’s resistance, the 
tears, belated, broke from her with sudden violence. Her 
breasts and shoulders shook. She wept uncontrollably into her 
two hands without sound other than the spasmodic intake of 
her breath. All her body wept. Such weeping Guy Open- 
shaw had never witnessed in his life before. And himself was 
the cause of it. That, for him, constituted the most terrible 
part of this tormented weeping. For one moment only he 
looked upon it with eyes perplexed and helpless, and then 
he gathered the girl’s shaken body into his arms and sat down 
with her in the decrepit easy chair. 

That action calmed her almost instantly. She dashed her 
fears aside with a gesture of impatience at her own folly, and 
showed him a face instantaneously serene and tranquil. 

“There!” she said, “I ’se cried at last. I’se been wanting 
to of a long while. It’s done me good. I’se better now. 
Are you vexed wi’ me for not tekking money? If you are, 
I’ll tek it. Aye, I’ll tek it to please you. I’ll tek it if you 
want me to. I’ll do aught, nobbut you’ll keep friends wi’ me.” 

He began again: “Listen, Thursday . . .” and she gathered 
up a frail corner of what covered her, to wipe her eyes. “Aye, 
I’se listening.” 

He said: “I must leave you now. You realise that, don’t 
you? But I want you to understand . . . I’m coming back. 
Yes! Without fail. On my word of honour. I’m coming 
back.” 

She enquired with a return of the old submissiveness: “Are 
ye? When are you coming back?” 

It was a question for whose directitude Guy Openshaw 
was scarcely yet prepared. He answered vaguely: “As soon 


The Tree of the Garden 369 

as I can. After I have been home. When I have spoken with 
my mother.” 

“Your mother!” It was the old tragedy again. “You 
won’t tell her!” 

“I must, Thursday. It’s impossible to go on any longer 
like this.” 

“Do you mean you’re going to tell her about . . . last 
night? About me?” 

“About everything.” 

She begged him: “Nay, don’t! Don’t tell her. Don’t vex 
her. Don’t ever let her know. She’ll only stop you coming 
back, like she did before. I should do same. And if she 
doesn’t—the other one will.” 

“Which other one?” 

“The one you’re going to marry.” 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said unsteadily, 
after a pause. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Any¬ 
thing may happen. But this is certain ... I won’t give up 
my friendship with you, Thursday. Not on any consideration. 
Not for anybody. And you shall not stay a day longer in 
this house. It’s horrible to think of. Thank God I found 
you in time. You’ve finished with this life. For ever. Do 
you understand me, Thursday?” 

She said: “Aye! I think I do. It seems ower good to 
be true. I’se trying to make mysen believe.” 

“You must leave this house to-day. As soon as ever I’ve 
gone. You must take some nice, comfortable rooms. Good 
rooms. Rooms we needn’t be ashamed of, where you can live 
happily until we can decide what is best to be done. Do you 
think you will be able to find such rooms?” 

“I might.” 

“Will you try?” 

“If you want me to.” 

He handled his purse again. She looked at it with a dis¬ 
trustful but docile eye. 

“For that,” he said, “you must have money.” He drew 


370 


The Tree of the Garden 

forth a note. She cried: “It’s too much. I’se not used to 
money like that. It frightens me. Only give me a little. I 
have some of my own. Nearly two pounds.” 

He insisted: “You will require it all, Thursday. For my 
sake you must take it.” 

But the money passed into so slack a hand and was retained 
so listlessly that he had to close the girl’s fingers over it with 
an imperative pressure of his own. “Now,” he said, “I’m 
going to give you my address in Beatonthorpe. And the 
telephone number.” Large and plain he wrote them down 
for her. “If anything happens after I have gone ... if 
you are in the least doubt or difficulty, you must let me know 
at once. Don’t hesitate a moment. If you cannot find rooms, 
or if you meet with any trouble, you are to remember that I 
am your friend.” 

She asked incredulously: “Do you mean it?” 

“I mean every word of it, Thursday.” 

“And you’ll come back to me?” 

“Yes! I will come back to you. Not here. Not to this 
house. I never want to see you in this house again. But 
in the new rooms. Yes! I shall come and see you there.” 

“When? Soon? If I get the rooms you want me to . . . 
will you come back soon? Aye, do! Say you will.” She 
clung to him, and all her body trembled. “Future frightens 
me. I can’t bide to look into it. It’s like water. It says 
naught and looks so dark and deep. My mother used to be 
frightened of it an’ all. She said she could bide as much as 
she could see, but darkness and time-to-come frightened her, 
she said.” 

He tranquillised her fears and clasped her body nearer to his 
heart. 

“Have no fear of time-to-come,” he told her. “So long as 
I’m alive to help you, Thursday, you shall never lack a friend. 
Never!” 

“How am I to know you’ll ever come back ti me?” the girl 
enquired. “Will you gi’e me summut? A keepsake? Sum- 


37i 


The Tree of the Garden 

mut I can look at an’ tek hold on, to remind me o’ you? 
Something belonging you that I shall know you’ll be forced 
to come back for ? I was forced ti leave yon hankercher 
at Whinsett when I cam’ away.” 

He thought for a while and answered: “Yes! I will leave 
you this, Thursday.” This was the late John Openshaw’s 
gold watch. “It belonged to my father,” he told her. “I 
would not lose it for the world.” 

She shrank from it protesting: “No, no! not that. I 
shouldn’t dare ti tek that. Something less than that. A pencil 
. . . or maybe a matchbox.” But he held firm. He said: 
“I want you to have this that you know the value of. I want 
you to keep it for me and take care of it for my sake until 
I see you again. You are to give it into nobody’s hand but 
mine. Nobody’s, Thursday. Do you understand?” Yes, she 
understood. “And I want you to promise me that you will 
not go away or hide from me again, for any reason whatever. 
Will you give me that promise?” 

“Aye! if you really want me to, I will,” she answered. 

Thereat the moment of his ordeal could be delayed no longer, 
when he must accept the challenge of that creaking staircase; 
dare that dreadful door; emerge into the bare publicity of 
that loathsome street; confront the consequences that every 
instant’s retardation magnified and made more dire. He 
pressed his lips to the wet mouth that clung to them; submitted 
his neck to the girl’s encircling arms. What would life’s 
issue be? 


XIII 


” * OT daring to entrust his shameful self to the publicity 
of railways and the perils of chance encounters, Guy 
Openshaw drove back to Beatonthorpe in a cab. The 
sound of this sinister conveyance as it lurched through the 
gates and ground up the gravel drive, sent the distracted 
blood to his mother’s heart. She cried: “What’s that? A 
cab?’’—and confronted her visitors with a blanched and awful 
face. Silence fell on all three like a pall, and the triangle of 
hushed faces—each staring into the profundity of the others’ 
eyes—configurated horror, stilled to the intensity of one look. 
The door opened, and Guy took in the human constituents 
of the room in one sharp glance, and the sight of the three 
women checked him with a notable embarrassment. His 
mother he had looked for. His mother he had hoped to see. 
But these other two he had been anxious to avoid. He halted 
for an instant with trouble in his eyes and irresolution in his 
body, and then came forward with an inaudible movement 
of the lips that did duty for a greeting. The face of Charlotte, 
contracting out of the vague apprehension that had previously 
diffused and blurred it, hardened to a look of instant anger; 
implacable and contemptuous. Mrs. Lattimer, bridling with 
expostulatory impatience, exclaimed: “What! you? We have 
actually condescended to come home at last, then! I declare! 
The company ought to feel highly flattered.” His mother, 
liberated by the vision of his own dear self from the torturing 
captivity of her fears, found realisation in a cry of intolerable 

37 * 




The Tree of the Garden 373 

reproach, that 9eemed expressive of all the pains his absence 
had cost her. 

“Guy! My boy, my boy!” 

He closed the door behind him and advanced to meet her. 
The effusion of love and yearning with which his mother rose 
and put her arms about his neck hardened Charlotte’s face 
to a deeper mould of anger. Mrs. Lattimer expressed irritation 
of such maternal folly with an impatient movement of her 
head and hands. “Goodness me! Don’t kiss the boy like that. 
He’s done nothing to be proud of. It’s perfectly disgraceful.” 

Mrs. Openshaw scarcely heard her. She was scanning her 
son’s face like the page of some feared and dreadful book. 
Looking into his eyes; at his hair; his brows; his lips—with 
visible anxiety for what she should read there. She realised 
and shared his need to have this moment sacred to their own 
two selves. The presence of these other, alien figures destroyed 
the sanctity so solemn an occasion called for. The arms she 
kept about him were half protective; their intent, she knew, was 
to defend him against every unkind and hostile breath; every 
ill thought and cruel consequence; to defend him from himself; 
from the burden of her own reproaches; from the world. 
Guy’s own hands removed her arms at last and put them 
quietly from him. She would have liked to weep awhile upon 
his neck; to soften all her sympathies and his in preparation 
for those precious confidences that never can divulge them¬ 
selves to anger or the resentful hardness of hearts. 

“Where ever have you been, Guy! What ever has hap¬ 
pened! Why did you not come sooner? . . . You don’t know 
the distress and terror I’ve been in. All last night . . . and 
this morning. The strain has been unbearable.” She looked 
at him with a long, concentrated gaze of supplication and 
appeal, and, as if the sight of his grey face were too much 
for her, sank upon the settee in an outburst of revulsed tears. 

Tears. Weeping. The shaken shoulders of tormented 
womanhood. The convulsion of breasts. The gasps of suffo¬ 
cated breath drawn through obstructive sobs. For Guy Open- 


374 


The Tree of the Garden 

shaw these things were become as the very features and coun¬ 
tenance of life visible. He stood by his mother’s bowed head 
in an attitude of trouble and contrition. 

“I’m sorry, mother . . .” 

“Sorry!” cried Mrs. Lattimer, in a voice of sharp vexation 
that seemed to recall sentiment to common sense and rebuke 
the absurdity of tears and futile sorrow at a time like this. 
“I should think you are sorry, indeed! Anybody can be sorry. 
You ought to be more than sorry. You ought to be heartily 
ashamed of yourself. It’s disgraceful. Positively disgraceful.” 

“Oh, please! Please!” Mrs. Openshaw besought her friend, 
stifling her tears the moment her son was thus attacked. “Let 
us have no anger. After all we’ve gone through. I cannot 
bear it. Thank God, Guy is safely back again. We have 
much to be thankful for.” 

“Thankful for?” Mrs. Lattimer exclaimed, throwing up 
her gloved hand towards the deity her friend invoked, as 
though to protest to His better wisdom. “You’re perfectly 
ridiculous. Just because he’s your son, and because you can 
kiss him and cry over him, you think that’s a reason to be 
thankful. Do you imagine I’ve any reason to be thankful? 
Do you imagine Charlotte’s any reason to be thankful ? We’re 
indignant. We’re disgusted. Both of us. We’ve every right 
to be disgusted. Guy has behaved abominably.” 

“Oh, hush, hush!” Mrs. Openshaw interposed. “These are 
dreadful things to say, even in anger. I cannot bear to hear 
you talk so. You may be doing my son a grievous injustice. 
Guy will explain. Guy will explain all.” 

“Guy will explain!” Mrs. Lattimer agreed. “O, yes! I’m 
very sure. Guy will explain. But whether we’re going to be 
such fools as to believe everything Guy tells us . . . I’m not 
so certain. Well?” She turned her head and shaking hat in 
Guy’s direction. “What have you to say for yourself, then? 
Have you anything to say? Perhaps you haven’t made it up 
yet! Some explanation is due to me and my daughter. I 


375 


The Tree of the Garden 

don’t say we shall accept it, unless it’s a very good explanation. 
Why didn’t you meet the train last night?” 

“ The street accident, dear,” his mother prompted him 
earnestly. “Tell us about the street accident.” 

“The street accident?” Guy Openshaw repeated vaguely. 
“What accident was that?” 

Mrs. Lattimer gave a laugh of dreadful sarcasm. “You 
may well ask what accident was that! That’s what we all 
want to know.” 

“Oh, Guy, Guy!” his mother protested with a shocked 
face. “Have you forgotten what you said to me . . . over the 
telephone?” 

Forgotten? Yes, to be sure he had, until this moment. 
It came back upon him, the dreadful fiction, with a burning 
and augmented shame. 

“Oh, that , mother!” he said, penitentially. “Yes. I had 
quite forgotten it. It was nothing much,” he admitted, and 
Mrs. Lattimer shook her head confirmatively. “I am very 
sure! I said so. I said so the moment I heard of it.” 

“But it delayed you, dear?” his mother urged him, anxious 
lest he might betray any second divagation from the truth. 
“Didn’t it? You said so.” 

“Let Guy tell his own story,” Mrs. Lattimer protested. 
“What’s the good of you prompting him. We don’t want to 
know what Guy told you. We want to know what Guy 
has to tell us!’ 

“Yes! it delayed me,” Guy said. “And I did go to the 
station, Mrs. Lattimer. But I was late . . . and your train 
had already gone.” 

“Which train ?” Mrs. Lattimer asked him sharply. 

“The ten-fifteen train.” 

She folded her hands assentively, as if to say: “I was aware 
of that.” 

“It was then that I rang my mother up,” he went on. 
“I told her what had happened.” 

“Yes!—and then?” Mrs. Lattimer demanded. “There was 


376 The Tree of the Garden 

a train after eleven. Why didn’t you catch that? Did you 
try? You surely don’t mean to say there was another street 
accident?” 

He said irresolutely, “No,” and glanced at Charlotte. The 
truth he did not shirk. That was now inevitable. But he 
wished to spare her delicacy, and knew not how. At the 
contact of their glances her eyes fell. Relations were hopelessly 
compromised in that quarter. She could no longer acknowledge 
looks from such a source. 

“I was delayed,” Guy Openshaw explained, “by . . . some¬ 
body.” 

“Well? Where did you spend the night? You didn’t sleep 
at the hotel—that we do know. They couldn’t tell us any¬ 
thing about you, there. Unless of course you booked the room 
in somebody else’s name. Did you? Is that your explanation?” 

He said slowly: “No. I did not sleep at the hotel.” 

“Where did you sleep?” 

Mrs. Openshaw, cowering before possibilities, put out feeble 
hands to implore her son. 

“Oh, Guy! Think ... think!” 

Charlotte Lattimer, for the first time speaking—not to him, 
but to her mother; to Mrs. Openshaw; to herself; to Destiny 
at large; to anybody but Guy—said: “He would be ashamed 
to tell. I was right. I knew what had happened.” 

“No, no,” Mrs. Openshaw protested. “I will not believe 
it. I cannot believe it. Guy is . . . Guy is shielding somebody. 
It is something noble he has done—not something shameful. 

I know my son. I know him better than you know him. I 
know his heart. I know his nature. Guy ... I beg of you. 
Tell me that my faith is justified. You are incapable of such 
an act.” 

“It is true, mother,” Guy Openshaw admitted in a low 
voice. She gave a cry and closed her eyes against the fright¬ 
fulness of the thing admitted. 


The Tree of the Garden 


377 


2 

"What is true?” Mrs. Lattimer demanded suddenly. “You 
tell us nothing, and you say ‘It is true.’ You are not going 
to assert, surely,” she said, with a marked change of attitude 
and manner, “that you spent all last night with the low 
creature Charlotte saw you talking to outside the hotel! No. 
I will never believe that. You must never ask me to believe 
that. If you claim to have anything of the gentleman left 
about you, you will deny it. You will deny it at once, before 
us all. If you deny it like a gentleman we will take your word. 
We cannot refuse to take your word. We must believe any¬ 
thing you tell us, if only you will tell us like a gentleman. 
I shall certainly believe you. Charlotte will believe you.” 

“I?” the girl said, with a swift outburst of rebellion. 
“Never. I don t believe him. I won’t believe him . . . 
whatever he says.” 

“Nonsense, Charlotte!” her mother apostrophised her. “If 
Guy says there has been a mistake ... If Guy says he only 
. . . only spoke to the woman . . . Perhaps she was begging. 
Perhaps she asked him to show her the way to somewhere. 
It doesn’t follow she was a bad character. Naturally she 
would look dreadful in the dark. Particularly after you’d had 
a long railway journey, and were upset with Guy not meeting 
you. You know you were upset, and rightly so. You were 
angry and indignant. Perhaps she was quite respectable. Guy 
may have known her. Did you, Guy? For goodness sake, 
boy, say something. Have you no sense? Who was the woman, 
Guy? Was it anybody you know? Anybody your mother 
knows? Anybody that anybody knows?” 

“It was somebody I used to know, Mrs. Lattimer,” he 
answered. “Somebody I used to know very well.” He paused, 
and added the name: “Thursday Hardrip.” 

If he had had any doubts as to their respective parts in the 
deception learned from the girl’s lips last night, the effect 
produced by the utterance of her name dispelled them. It 


378 The Tree of the Garden 

fell upon their hearings with the flat weight of a book upon 
the floor, and an instantaneous silence ensued. They all knew; 
all three of them. They had all been party to the abominable 
plot. His mother. Charlotte. Mrs. Lattimer. And it was 
the last thing they had expected to hear from him. Into Mrs. 
Openshaw’s heart alone had crept misgivings and alarms that 
she dared not, for her comfort’s sake, divulge to Mrs. Lattimer 
and her outraged daughter. That she had repressed even from 
herself. Mrs. Lattimer was the first to break the tyranny of 
silence that bound them all. 

“There!” she cried, with triumphant understanding. “If 
only you’d said so at first. Without all this mystery and non¬ 
sense. I told you it was somebody, Charlotte. We don’t want 
to pry into your secrets, Guy,” she continued. “You have a 
perfect right to speak to ... to old acquaintances, of course. 
It is indiscreet, and foolish, and humiliating to Charlotte. 
But that doesn’t excuse your behaviour to Charlotte and to me 
last night. I hope you’re heartily ashamed of yourself. Well, 
there! You know. I’ve been very angry with you, and I’ve 
had every right to be angry with you. You’ve made us all 
ridiculous, ringing up hotels and places under the belief that 
something dreadful must have happened to you, and setting 
people talking. But for me your mother would have gone 
to the police, and the whole matter would have got into the 
papers!” She gave a shudder of disgust. “Shocking! We 
should have had reporters calling at the house with notebooks, 
and interviewing the servants. Well. Let this be a lesson to 
you. Now you’re going to make your peace with Charlotte, 
Look at her, Guy. The girl hasn’t a scrap of colour in her 
face. I’m sure she never closed her eyes all night. I didn’t. 
Well! the best thing is to leave you two young people to¬ 
gether, to talk it over between yourselves and come to an 
understanding. I’m sure you can if you try.” Charlotte drew 
herself up with a gesture of repugnance. “I want no under¬ 
standings, thank you,” she said, with an acrid voice. “I under¬ 
stand all I want to understand.” 


The Tree of the Garden 379 

“Hush, child!” her mother commanded her. “Don’t be silly, 
and don’t talk nonsense. Married life’s made up of misunder¬ 
standings. You’ve got to get used to it. Unless young people 
are prepared to give and take, they’re not prepared to marry 
at all. Do as Guy asks you. Don’t you see how sorry and 
ashamed he is? You’ve got to take pity on him, Charlotte.” 
She began to gather up her skirts as if she contemplated mo¬ 
tion. “Now, make it up between you. Tell Guy all about 
our shopping. He’s burning to know.” 

Perhaps Charlotte Lattimer had a surer intuition of what 
was in Guy Openshaw’s mind than her mother, who obviously 
sought to stifle every question beneath the weight of words. 
The repugnance the girl showed towards Guy Openshaw 
assumed a defensive character. In the covert glances she had 
aimed at his face, each time she knew its gaze averted, she 
had descried something graver and deeper than shame. This, 
she was assured, betrayed not the mere culprit of an unworthy 
passion. She said to herself, with a sudden contraction of the 
heart: “She has told him. He knows.” The silence of Mrs. 
Openshaw drew from a deeper source than conviction of her 
son’s misconduct. Her apprehensions shrank dizzily from an 
abyss of illimitable possibilities, asking: “What is going to 
happen!” Guy Openshaw, shamed and troubled though he 
was, had the knowledge of great injury, of great provocation, 
to sustain him. If he stood for culpability in one regard, he 
commanded righteousness in another. And besides, last night 
had taught him many lessons. Yesterday he might have wav¬ 
ered, impotent, before this overwhelming preponderance of 
Sex. But the riddle of the Sphynx for him remained unread 
no longer. He sensed the strength and comfort of supreme 
wisdom. Purchased with shame, at the price of his soul it 
might be, but knowledge—even of evil—is power. 

“Mrs. Lattimer . . .” he said, and there was that in the 
sound of his voice that caused his mother to draw breath 
quickly and close her eyes. “I don’t want to defend myself 
at all. I’ve behaved very badly I know. I’ve caused distress 


380 The Tree of the Garden 

and suffering which I never intended. To myself as well as 
to others. Yesterday . . .” He broke off there with a sense 
of the futility of words. “It’s no use going into that now. 
That’s over. But I want to know. ... I want to know at 
whose instigation Barnard went to Whinsett?” 

“Don’t ask me, Guy!” Mrs. Lattimer exclaimed, with swift 
prevarication. “Don’t look at me like that. I know nothing 
about Barnard’s doings. He never tells me what he does; 
perhaps I shouldn’t understand him if he did. I didn’t know 
he’d been to Whinsett. He never mentioned it to me.” 

He turned from her to Charlotte. She flung back his look 
with resentful eyes. 

“Are you accusing me?” 

He said firmly: “You were the only one who knew. I 
told nobody else. You wrote the letter.” 

“How dare you suggest! . . .” she cried. “It is insufferable. 
I won’t stand it. Have you not insulted me enough?” There 
was a quick movement of her hands. She twisted something 
from her finger and laid it on the table nearest her. It was 
her engagement ring, that relapsed on the polished surface with 
a stupefying tinkle. “There!” 

“No, no, Charlotte! Charlotte!” Her mother rose in a 
tumult of consternation. “Do you hear me! Take the ring 
back. Take it back at once. Are you mad? Guy was only 
asking you a question. Can you not bear to be questioned? 
He has a right to ask questions. Surely! Anybody has.” 

“Not now!” said Charlotte, breathing hotly through wry 
lips. “Not of me. I won’t speak to him.” 

“You are self-willed and ridiculous,” her mother cried. “I 
warned you to control yourself. Take the ring back.” She 
plucked it from the table and essayed to force it upon her 
daughter’s acceptance. “Do you hear! Take it back at once. 
You are making a perfect scene about nothing.” Charlotte 
defended her hands from all contact with the disputed emblem. 
“I will not!” she exclaimed. “I won’t touch it. Let him give 
it to her.” 


The Tree of the Garden 381 

“Hush!” cried her mother. “Be silent when I bid you. 
You are making things impossible. After we have just come 
back from spending goodness knows how much in London. 
Are you going to let this silly lovers’ squabble develop into a 
public scandal ? Do you want to make us all a laughing-stock 
for the enjoyment of our friends? It is the very thing they 
would love. Goodness! You can’t carry on like this at the 
eleventh hour. You ought to have quarrelled months ago, or 
else waited until you were married—as sensible people do. 
Take the ring. Take the ring.” 

Charlotte repulsed her mother’s importunate hand with 
such intensity that Mrs. Lattimer turned beseechfully to Guy. 
“Guy! Guy! Speak to her, do! Reason with her.” She 
pressed the ring into his unresisting fingers. “Make her put 
it on. Put it on for her. She can’t refuse to allow that. 
She will take it back from you, if you ask her nicely. I know 
she will. She thinks the world of you. She won’t listen to 
me, but she’ll listen to you.” 

“Don’t come near me,” Charlotte said through thin, hard 
lips of determination. “I don’t want you near me—after last 
night.” 

Mrs. Openshaw, shocked and trembling, had been a tortured 
eye-witness of the intense scene, expressing its dreadfulness by 
means of futile wavings of the hand; supplicating the re¬ 
spective actors by name. “Charlotte!” “Mrs. Lattimer! . . .” 
Guy! . . .” In the intensity of their feelings and the height 
of the conflict her interventions passed unheeded. But at this 
crisis she crossed over to her son and laid imploring hands 
upon his sleeve. “Guy! Guy! Blame me. Your mother is 
to blame. Not Charlotte. Not Barnard. Nobody but me. 
God forgive me. It was I who sent Barnard to Whinsett.” 

The confession, coming from a quarter so remote, so un¬ 
expected, so exemplary and unassailable, made Guy Openshaw 
recoil. 

“You, mother?” 

“Yes! Your mother, Guy.” 


382 The Tree of the Garden 

“But I never told you . . . How did you know?” he said. 

“Never mind how I knew, dear. Mothers know many 
things. Their hearts tell them. Blame me. I am alone to 
blame.” 

“There, there!” Mrs. Lattimer exclaimed, strewing her 
words of indulgence over this dangerous topic as if they were 
ashes spread upon a frosted causeway. “Let that suffice. Don’t 
let us blame anybody. Goodness me! We’ve had trouble 
enough without talking of blame to follow. Let us forget and 
forgive. Take the ring, Charlotte. Guy, give her the ring. 
Say no more, Mrs. Openshaw, pray! Thank goodness it’s all 
over. Charlotte. Stop! Come back. Where in the world are 
you going to?” For Charlotte had abruptly moved towards 
the door with the invocation: “Mother!” 

“I am going home,” said Charlotte. With a heightened 
sense of the appropriate she knew that no better opportunity 
than this, protected by the timely interposition of Mrs. Open- 
shaw’s word, was likely to be offered for her dignified with¬ 
drawal. She snatched at the chance of taking leave while 
yet the mantle of righteous indignation clad the shoulders of 
departure; before more questions should be put to her and 
the hateful exposure of her complicity be precipitated. Whether 
this rupture with Guy Openshaw were irremediable she knew 
not, but her pride would plead no culpability in this place 
and before these witnesses. 

“Home?” protested her mother. “Guy! go along with her. 
The girl’s not fit to be left by herself. You’ve thoroughly 
upset her. She makes me frightened.” 

Even his mother, snatching at this frail hope of reconcilia¬ 
tion, urged him towards the girl with a gentle hand. 

“Guy ... go with Charlotte. It is only right, dear. 
Speak to her . . . for your mother’s sake.” 

Holding the scorned ring in his troubled fingers, that seemed 
so trumpery a symbol now of the life-long constancy it had 
once professed to stand for; so shallow an expression of the 
love that can be bound within the compass of a finger, Guy 


The Tree of the Garden 383 

Openshaw stood rooted in his own perplexity—looking at his 
mother, at Mrs. Lattimer, at Charlotte receding from them 
with defiant head. She uttered the word “Mother” again, 
more peremptorily, as she reached the door. 

“Goodness!” Mrs. Lattimer tried to resume possession of 
her distracted plumes and furbelows, that shook with the 
violence of internal feelings like branches in a wind. “Give 
me time, Charlotte. Am I to be ordered about by my own 
daughter as if I was a child? It’s insupportable. I declare, 
I don’t know where I am. I suppose I must go, since she says 
so. Wait, Charlotte. Don’t run away from me like that. 
How do you expect me to catch you up? I haven’t your legs. 
Guy! Where are your manners? Surely you intend to see us 
out?” 

Still holding the ring, Guy Openshaw moved mechanically 
forward and hastened to the hall. But Charlotte had divined 
the danger, and with uplifted head frustrated the service he 
sought to do, expressing aversion of his tainted presence as if 
she shunned not a lover, but a plague. Mrs. Lattimer, floun¬ 
dering in her wake, found her prospective son-in-law discon¬ 
solate in the empty hall, before an open and deserted door. 
She shook the feathers of her hat with a mortuary gloom as 
if they had been the plumes on a hearse, protesting: “I de¬ 
clare! I declare!” 

“Guy!” she said, in a voice of intensity, “you mustn’t let 
her! I rely on you. Have you got it? The ring? Take care 
of it. Whatever you do, don’t lose it. Put it in a safe place. 
No, not in your waistcoat pocket! Goodness! Have you no 
idea? Where’s Charlotte? Charlotte! You don’t mean to 
say she’s gone and left me? Whatever will people think! I 
must go . . .” 

She left him in a whirl of pleas and protestations, turning 
round at every other step to wave her hand and fling some 
cheerful phrase to him, that the dreadfulness of this leave-taking 
might be draped and millinered in a comfortable effusion. 
Only when she had shaken her hand to him for the last time 


384 The Tree of the Garden 

and addressed her face homeward did the effusiveness die out 
of her. The artificial lights kindled in her countenance for 
company usage were extinguished one by one till nothing but 
the fixed and parsimonious taper, that humble self required 
to see by, remained. Without other light than this, that showed 
her face grey and old and careworn, she stumbled home to 
seek her daughter, formulating endless phrases behind the per¬ 
petual working of her lips. 


3 

Guy Openshaw asked himself for how much of this dreadful 
happening he was responsible. How much of the ruin might 
be attributable to him? Inseparably he seemed victim and 
persecutor; the object and the cause of suffering. And in this 
cataclysm of human conduct he could descry nowhere, and in 
nothing a redressal of all the wrongs inflicted and endured. 
Only an extension of them; an endless enlargement of the 
circle of suffering. To repair old wrongs with new remedies 
was but to pour new wine into old bottles. For wrongs (it 
seemed) no reparation was possible—save to suffer them, and 
by acceptance to prevent the vicious ring of penalties from 
spreading. Filled with remorse and fear to read the unutter¬ 
able anguish in her eyes, he went slowly back to face his 
mother, shaping words of penitence and sorrow. 

Seated on the settee she awaited him. She held her two 
hands interlocked, in a posture of pain. Her head was bowed; 
age and sorrow crushed her shoulders. Never had he seen her 
thus before. In the depths of her submission to despair he 
believed that his return had passed unnoticed, but as he neared 
her she lifted her head and put out both her arms with a 
gesture imploring and commiserative that went to his heart. 

“Guy! . . .” 

He offered her in silence the neck she craved, and her arms 
closed upon it, drawing his head down into the constricted 
darkness of a bosom that rose and fell. “Can you forgive 
me? Will you forgive me?” 



The Tree of the Garden 385 

He answered, speaking into the muffled warmth of what ob¬ 
scured his lips and eyes: “Yes, mother.” She held his head 
against her bosom tightly for the solace it yielded, and then 
released him with a curious regainment of her calm. “God 
bless you, Guy. I want to talk to you. We must talk to¬ 
gether. Not from the lips any longer; from the heart. Truth 
comes out of the heart; lips too often crucify it. Will you 
give me your heart, Guy? Will you open it to me ... let 
your mother into it? Not to stand upon its threshold, but to 
enter where your inmost thoughts are?” 

He said, with deep sincerity: “I would like to, mother.” 

She went on: “If I open my heart to you, Guy, it may 
make things easier for us both. For all that has happened, 
your mother is to blame. That was because she loved you 
too dearly, and love misled her. She was so jealous of her 
son’s belief in her that she stooped even to deception to inspire 
and retain it. I have wilfully deceived you, Guy.” 

He murmured: “Surely not, mother.” 

“Wilfully and systematically deceived you, Guy,” she re¬ 
peated. “I see it now too clearly. My love caused me to for¬ 
get that truth is infinitely higher than the noblest semblance 
of it, and that true worship is impossible without understand¬ 
ing. Evil is not a thing to be kept by force from us, Guy, 
even when that force is love. No knowledge is vile, so only 
we learn from it. Only knowledge concealed is evil, like the 
pitfall hidden from the eye of man. I have used my knowl¬ 
edge to increase your blindness, Guy; not to give you light. 
Is it any wonder that you should have stumbled? The things 
I might have taught you, the wisdom that might be in me to 
impart, I have withheld from you through a false and foolish 
shame. And so the years that should have drawn us closer in 
the bonds of perfect understanding and explicit love, have wid¬ 
ened between us like a sea. Oh, I know it, Guy; I know it. 
I have given you paper flowers in place of roses, for fear their 
thorns might prick you; and I have lived in dread of the day 
when my son should first discover the deception. Your father, 


386 The Tree of the Garden 

Guy . . .”—her voice broke somewhat, and she rested on the 
words awhile. 

“Yes, mother ?” 

“Your father ... I have not told you the truth about your 
father. I loved him too dearly. I loved you too dearly. It 
was wrong of me; wicked of me, Guy. Love does not de¬ 
mand perfection for its food. Love grows out of just such 
soil as suits it—and if love cannot, then love must die. Your 
father was the best of fathers in innumerable ways. Kind, in¬ 
dulgent, generous, honest, thoughtful, devoted to his wife, 
wrapped up in his son. But he was human, Guy. He was 
very human . . .” She paused, and looked at him as if to 
emphasise the meaning of her words, and Guy murmured: 
“I think I understand, mother.” 

“I want you to understand, dear,” his mother said. “Not 
very long ago I should have shrunk from such a topic for your 
father’s sake—and for my own. I should have thought it 
shameful between a mother and her son. But it has been a 
part of the deception that divided us, Guy. It has been a 
very great part. I tried for years to keep the nature of your 
father’s business from your knowledge. I tried for years 
to hide from you all that he was. For years, Guy, I have been 
drifting farther and farther from the truth, as if the truth 
were a burning, shameful thing, and not (as it is) the very 
sunlight that warms and cleanses life. And now I want to 
divest my soul of all that has crippled it so long. I want to 
come out into the breadth and openness of truth and see my 
son and be seen by him without subterfuge and without fear. 
It is time we came to know each other at last.” 

Thereon she told him the story of his father’s death and 
of her bitter shame and sorrow that changed, under the force 
of love, to a deeper, nobler allegiance. 

And then—not even hiding Charlotte’s part in it, on this 
solemn occasion of her atonement with truth, but beseeching 
Guy’s clemency for the girl—she recounted the history of the 
dreadful intervention that had cost them all such anguish and 


The Tree of the Garden 387 

such bitter tears. “It has lain like lead on my heart at times,” 
she told her son, “when I have seen you and Charlotte to¬ 
gether, and thought of all the falsehood on which your future 
was being based. I said: ‘No blessing can come upon it.’ I 
grew frightened of the truth I had so injured. There were 
moments when I prayed that some power greater than my own 
should do what I lacked the strength to do, and tell you the 
thing my lips concealed. At the moments of my deepest de¬ 
ception, Guy, when I deceived you the most grievously, I 
yearned to tell you all. . . . Perhaps my prayer has been an¬ 
swered. I am glad that this has happened. I am glad that 
truth has been torn out of my own weak hands that sought 
to hold it. Where truth is not, nothing good and noble can 
be. When we crush truth, we stifle our own souls. Oh, be 
open with me, my dear! Your mother has learned much 
since last she spoke with you. She has learned that love lives 
independent of all so-called righteousness; that love distin¬ 
guishes in no wise between the good and evil. Even your 
weaknesses should make you dear to me, and be as a meeting 
place where your mother’s love can reach you. Well,” she 
said. . . . “You have seen her at last!” 

He answered: “Yes, mother,” and she added hurriedly, as 
though for her justification: “At least we have the consola¬ 
tion of knowing that all this while the poor girl has been well 
looked after. Barnard Lattimer has proved a true friend in 
that respect. He has spared no pains to ensure her comfort.” 

“Barnard Lattimer!” Guy Openshaw explained with tight¬ 
ened lips. “Never speak to me of Barnard Lattimer again, 
mother. If he were to come into the room at this moment 
. . . I would not answer for what might happen. He is a 
low, dishonourable cad.” 

She caught something of the horror of the truth from Guy’s 
hard face and blazing eyes, and a cry broke from her. 

“You don’t mean . . .” she said; “. . . You don’t mean 
to say that Barnard Lattimer has betrayed my trust in him!” 


388 The Tree of the Garden 

Her voice sank to a shocked whisper. “Oh, no, Guy! Not 
that! Surely never that!” 

“It is just what I do mean, mother,” he told her. “He took 
advantage of Thursday’s wretchedness. And he and I must 
have a reckoning together.” 

“God forgive me,” Mrs. Openshaw murmured, and bowed 
her head in silence. “. . . Tell me all, Guy! Spare me noth¬ 
ing, my dear. Let this be part of your mother’s punishment.” 

He took up the story at her prompting. In the altered 
disposition of his mother’s heart, how easy, how comfortable 
did confession now become. Before, when he had committed 
the story of his love and indiscretion to her hearing, the task 
had been arduous, the labour weary. All the while, despite 
the softness of her voice and bearing, he had felt the resistance 
of an attitude shocked and apprehensive. But now he spoke 
before an open heart; before a sympathy that lent encourage¬ 
ment to every word. There was little he hid from his mother. 
All the girl’s history he recounted since that awful day of 
Barnard Lattimer’s betrayal; her struggles; her apathies; her 
soulless submission to the life that crushed her. “We talked,” 
he told his mother, “until I lost sight of time. When I looked 
at my watch, the last train to Beatonthorpe was gone. She 
clung to me. She begged me not to leave her.” 

“Oh, my dear!” The tears escaped freely from her eyes. 
“. . . It is a greater joy to me than any I have known for 
years, to feel at last I have regained the confidence of my 
own, my darling boy. Whatever happens, Guy, one thing is 
sure and constant—your mother’s love. Value it, Guy; cherish 
it. If you value it and cherish it, it will struggle to be worthy 
of you. 

“Once upon a time, such a confession would have shocked 
me unutterably. You know that, Guy. To-day. To-day . . . 
for some reason I cannot clearly comprehend, some feeling 
within me that seems like enlightenment, and yet, for any 
explanation I can give of it, stands on no better footing than 
the blindest prejudice—to-day I am not shocked. If any- 


The Tree of the Garden 3^9 

thing ... I am humble, and in some way proud of my son. 
He has repaired, at least, something of the grievous harm I 
did—the still more grievous harm I might have done. All 
that has happened seems like a judgment on your mother’s 
ignorance and presumption, Guy. Higher hands have led you 
than my own; I dare no longer question Destiny after such a 
rebuke as this.” 

Finally he told her of the girl’s doubts of his return ; of 
her conviction that his departure spelled a last good-bye; of her 
ultimate belief in him, and of that supreme pledge given. 
Perhaps this parting with his father’s watch was the one fea¬ 
ture in all the long history that troubled Mrs. Openshaw the 
most, but she let no sign be seen by him. He had acted accord¬ 
ing to the dictate of some higher wisdom than her own. His 
heart had led him fearlessly where reason might have foundered. 

“Guy!” she said. “Thank God that for what has hap¬ 
pened some redress, however inadequate, is still within our 
reach. She trusts you, dear. That trust must never, never be 
betrayed. She has given you everything within the power of 
a woman to give to one she loves. It is not your fault, not 
hers, that she could no longer offer you her first purity. The 
fault is mine. Yes, mine. I, not she, should bear the guilt 
and shame of all that this poor girl has endured. . . . Guy, 
I want you to take me to her. I want to see her. I want to 
speak with her.” 

He said, almost on a note of protest: “You, mother?” 

She told him: “I, dear,” very gently, in a voice of fervour 
and humility. 

“I scarcely know what to say, mother,” Guy responded. 
“I don’t know whether you . . . you ought to see her.” 

“Do you think your mother is not worthy of her, Guy?” 
she asked him. “Or do you think (as once, in my ignorance, 
I was foolish enough to teach you) that your mother is too 
righteous? She is of my own sex. She makes me almost 
ashamed of that sex when I look upon myself, Guy; proud 


39 ° The Tree of the Garden 

of it when I think upon her. You must take me to her. 
. . . I would like to kiss her.” 

“Of course, you know, mother,” Guy said, “that there is 
no question of marriage between us. She will not hear of 
such a thing. She says she never dreamed of marrying me 
until I insisted. All she wanted was to be my friend.” 

“I am growing an old woman, Guy,” his mother said, “and 
old age loses many fears. Once upon a time I think I prided 
myself on the keenness of my spiritual sight. I could read 
offences in the smallest print with ease. Trifles looked tre¬ 
mendous to me. I could distinguish sin in anything. But I 
think ... I hope, that sort of eyesight fails me, Guy. If 
anything, I begin to fear I can no longer distinguish plain 
moral values with any certainty. I know—by what has hap¬ 
pened—that righteousness can perpetrate some wicked things; 
and goodness can cause deep suffering, as evil does. Perhaps, 
too, it is only late in life that I have come to learn something 
of the lesson latent in humanity. For some reason that I 
cannot explain to you, any more than I can define it to myself, 
I have looked on flesh and blood as things innately sinful, 
things to shun—to flee from. Many experiences should have 
taught me otherwise, but my spiritual heart seemed hardened. 
. . . These things are very curious. It is an amazement to me 
that I am able to discuss them with you, Guy. For years 
I have avoided all discussion of them with myself. You do not 
know what a comfortable thing it is to me now, that I may 
speak freely vnth my son and have no shame. After the lesson 
taught me out of my own offending, I will try not to lead you, 
Guy. Your young heart must guide you better than my old 
one. She loves you. What shall come out of it I know not, 
any more than I foresaw the fruit of the bitter seed I sowed. 
It shall be revealed in the fulness of time. 

“. . . But after last night, Guy, whatever happens, your 
heart must never disown her. You have memories in common 
that must, henceforth, be sacred to you both. Into this friend¬ 
ship thus consecrated, put all that is noblest in you. Oh, 


39i 


The Tree of the Garden 

Guy! ... in the meanest love there are infinite possibilities. 
And if, at length, you find that your reverence outlives your 
love, and love dies ... let love die worthily, Guy, at least, 
giving place to a sober, kind and honourable friendship that 
shall survive it. She has merited much of your affection; 
repay it if you can. Let this be the first duty by whose light 
your other duties may be made clear. Go back to her soon, 
Guy. Let her have the assurance of your friendship and pro¬ 
tection. To-morrow you shall take me with you. . . .” 

“And Charlotte?” he asked her, after some moments of 
hesitation. 

“. . . As your conscience tells you, Guy. But let this other 
be the first charge upon it. Hers is the true claim upon you. 
Later, when we have settled this poor child in some place of 
happiness and safety, you may tell Charlotte the whole story. 
How she will receive it, or treat you then . . . time alone can 
show. I have been witness of her treatment of you this after¬ 
noon. It shocked me, dear. Now, now I don’t know what 
my real feelings are. Can it be that I am glad, at heart, to 
have my own son back again in the undivided shelter of his 
mother’s love? Have I been jealous of Charlotte all this time, 
Guy, and of the influence she had upon you—fearing, perhaps, 
that you might pass to her before I found the chance or cour¬ 
age to disclose my true self?” 

He said: “After what has happened, mother, I don’t think 
I could ever marry Charlotte—even if she would consent to 
such a thing. All my old affection for her seems dead; 
I doubt if I could revive it, however hard I tried. And I 
seem to have lost the wish to try, mother. As soon as Thursday 
is happily settled ... I think I should like to go to Oxford 
without delay, if you are willing. Not to run away from 
Thursday, mother, you may be sure; but because I feel I 
have been leading an idle life quite long enough. I want to 
get back to my books and old ambitions once again. I should 
write to Thursday regularly, of course, and keep up my friend¬ 
ship with her.” 


392 


The Tree of the Garden 

Mrs Openshaw bent an ineffable look upon her son. “You 
are right, dear,” she said. “No decision could have gladdened 
your mother more. Whatever else ... I thank God for this 
great breaking down of all false barriers between us. As we 
really are, dear, so we now stand towards each other. Not 
under artificial and deceptive lights, but clearly and coura¬ 
geously in the brightness of Truth. . . . Kiss me, Guy. This 
is my own true son. Let me be his own true mother at last, 
and remain so . . . till the end.” 

(i) 


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